


Blake

by kitsunerei88



Series: Revolutionary Arc Plus Extras [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Series - murkybluematter
Genre: Anger Management, Butterfly Effect, Character Study, F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, For Want of a Nail, Friendship, Gen, Rage, Rebellion, RevArc, Rigel Black Exchange, Rigelverse, The Pureblood Pretense, The Rigel Black Chronicles, The Rigel Black Series, so far down the rabbit hole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23893627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88
Summary: There are moments that change the course of history, and there are moments that don’t. Take one person, for example: one child, one choice, and one decision. In some ways, changing one thing does next to nothing; in other ways, they change quite a lot.Take Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier: halfblood, Truth-speaker, noble bastard. But let’s say that he is Aldon Étienne Blake only, and that he never grew up in the house on the hill.A revolution still happens, and Aldon Blake is still in the middle of it. And some things happen exactly the same as they did—but others don’t.
Relationships: Aldon Blake/Francesca Lam
Series: Revolutionary Arc Plus Extras [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722145
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40
Collections: Rigel Black Chronicles Appreciation, Rigel Black Exchange Round 1





	Blake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mercuryandglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryandglass/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Liar Liar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17632973) by [kitsunerei88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88). 
  * Inspired by [Vanguard](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22973080) by [kitsunerei88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88). 



There are moments that change the course of history, and there are moments that don’t. Take one person, for example: one child, one choice, and one decision. In some ways, changing one thing does next to nothing; in other ways, they change quite a lot.

Take Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier: halfblood, Truth-speaker, noble bastard. But let’s say that he is Aldon Étienne Blake only, and that he never grew up in the house on the hill.

A revolution still happens, and Aldon Blake is still in the middle of it. And some things happen exactly the same as they did—but others don’t.

* * *

“I can’t do it, Lina,” Christie says, pacing the living room of her beautiful penthouse apartment. She has Aldon Étienne Blake in her arms, only a few days old, and he is red and tiny and he cries like there is no tomorrow. He has a full head of black hair already, and the few glimpses she has had of his eyes show they are the same bright gold as his father’s. He’s going to look just like his father in miniature, which makes the ruse perfect, but he came from _her_ , and he cries for _her_ , and she can’t do it. “I know I said I would, and I know you’ve spent the last six months under virtual house arrest because of it, but I just can’t do it. I—he's perfect, and I can’t give him up.”

Eveline Rosier, formerly Eveline Avery, more preferably Lina Avery, tilts her head and eyes the infant with a slight wrinkle of distaste. Despite her expression, Christie knows that if anyone is able to help her, it is this woman in front of her. “All right,” she says, her voice perfectly calm. “That certainly makes things complicated. Sit down, you’re making me dizzy. I’m not going to force you to give up your baby, so let’s talk about this.”

Christie sits, in the plush burgundy armchair she spent half her pregnancy in, which still has stacks of books beside her. Mysteries and thrillers, the exact genre that she and Evan love. “I’m sitting.”

“I can see that.” Lina is silent for a moment, thinking, her eyes tilted upwards. Christie is good at many things, but Lina has a grasp of people, of politics, of strategy that Christie never had. “My last six months, we can say that I had a stillbirth, very traumatic, and I’ll go off on a recovery vacation to France. That isn’t an issue. But you’re going to have a son that looks like the Lord Evan Rosier, and anyone who sees him is going to know it. You can’t hide a child away, not in London, not when you work at the Rosier Investment Trust. You’ll have to quit your job, move away, find work elsewhere—you won’t be able to see Evan anywhere near as much, if at all. I might be able to talk Evan into some support payments, but it’ll be complicated, and I don’t know. Your standard of living will change. It’ll be hard, Christie.”

Christie swallows, looking around at her home. She hasn’t lived here long—Evan bought it for her, when she told him she was pregnant. Evan loves her, and she knows he would love his child, but things are hard for him. He is the pureblood Lord Rosier, and she is a Muggleborn nobody who works in his company. A fifteen-year relationship means nothing in light of who they are, to the world that exists between their statuses. “Hard is—hard is fine. As long as I have my baby, I can—I’ll be fine.”

The other woman nods, the briefest flicker of a smile coming across her lips as she pulls herself up, off the sofa she was lounging in. “I’ll talk to Evan, then. If you want my thoughts, Christie...”

“Hmm?”

“I think you made the right choice. God knows, I would have made an awful mother.”

* * *

Lina lets herself into Rosier Place. If she were the sort of woman who felt dread, then she would have dreaded this conversation, but dread was in the part of herself that died when she became a Stormwing. There’s little in the world that causes her fear, and Lord Evan Rosier is decidedly not any of them.

He’s in his parlour, worrying himself pacing in circles. Christie was supposed to be here today, her babe in arms, and she wasn’t, which was why Lina went to speak to her. Evan is convinced that something dire has happened, and maybe, from his perspective, something dire _has_ happened. Christie doesn’t want to give her baby up, and Christie is a million times warmer than either her or Evan, so she can’t really begrudge the woman.

“She said no, Evan,” Lina says, taking a seat without an invitation. She has been in this ruse for only a few years, but she and Evan have a camaraderie of sorts, a partnership that isn’t romantic, that isn’t a marriage, but is something just as strong. He’ll never be Étienne, but he is her best friend alive. “Christie and Aldon are fine, but she’s decided that she can’t give him up. She wants to raise him with her.”

Evan pales, stopping in his tracks. “But if he’s raised with her, he’ll be a known halfblood.”

Lina shrugs. Evan isn’t wrong, but she is less concerned about it. Aldon _is_ a halfblood, and no palace of lies can change that.

“His life—the laws…” Evan draws a breath, lets it out slowly, then he walks the sofa across from her and drops into it, running one hand through loose black hair. “I can’t protect him, not if he’s going to be a known halfblood. The Wizengamot is talking about the employment restrictions now, and I can’t tell how broad they’ll be. There’s pressure on the Hogwarts Board of Governors to ban halfbloods from Hogwarts. I don’t want that for my son, Eveline, and I can’t stop the laws from passing. And the business—”

“The conservatives will pull out of Rosier Investment Trust over it,” Lina finishes for him, leaning back. She’s heard it all before, his justifications for their fake marriage, for hiding his long and faithful relationship with Christina Blake, a rising star at the Rosier Investment Trust. She doesn’t always approve of his choices, but she can’t deny that his ruse has provided her, a third party, with quite a lot of benefits. “I’m not going to insist that Christie give her baby up, Evan. What about Lord Potter? He’s engaged to marry a Muggleborn. It was announced two weeks ago in Daily Prophet.”

Evan glares at her, hawk-like eyes sharp. “Lord James Potter is of the Book of Gold, and his family seat is _Peverell Hall_. In terms of family wealth, he’s far better off than we are, and his income isn’t dependent on the goodwill of others. He may do as he pleases but we, as a Book of Copper business family, cannot. And in case you’ve forgotten, Eveline, _we_ are married in the eyes of the public.”

Lina shrugs again. She’s heard that before, too. “You can always divorce me. Use infidelity, or mental cruelty, or the good old refused-to-perform-her-wifely-duties loophole. Then marry Christie, formally adopt your own son, not that anyone will doubt that he is your son with his looks, and you have your family with you.”

Evan blanches, crosses his arms over his chest. “The scandal—it’s impossible, Eveline, and the second they see him, they’ll know that our marriage, and our excuse for the divorce, was a sham.”

“I’m fairly certain that Aldon is clear and convincing evidence of infidelity, actually.” Lina laughs, low and amused. “I don’t think that’ll be so evident. You have an affair with Christie during our marriage, the two of us are pregnant at the same time, I have a stillbirth but she gives you a son. I’m not seeing where the sham comes in at all.”

“They will _vilify_ us,” Evan retorts flatly, waving a hand. “Not only the conservatives would pull their investments then. And how would that leave you? You had your own reasons for our marriage.”

Lina pauses. That part is true, but a few years in, she finds it less important. Being with Evan, shielding him and Christie and now Aldon, that’s given her a place she belongs in Britain; a family of her own, even if it isn’t a traditional one. She lost Étienne, so she had come home to the Averys, only to be pushed to take roles that she didn’t want, for which she would never be suitable. Lina had never wanted a husband, and she didn’t want to be a mother, but she did value family.

That wouldn’t change just because she wasn’t Evan’s wife. She has never been Evan’s wife, and their bonds of family have always been different. Lina has no doubt that their close relationships will continue, whether or not she is Evan’s supposed wife.

“Don’t worry about me, Evan,” she says finally. “Divorce is its own marker in our lovely society. I’d make my own way, and you know it. I think you’d have little choice, anyway—if you don’t bring Christie and Aldon into the open, then you’ll either need to get yourself an heir, or find more excuses as to why you don’t have an heir, since I’m not giving you one. My stillbirth was very traumatizing, by the way. I must now go to the south of France to recover in the sun. At least six months of recovery. I’ll pay off Healer Braggs to say so, then hex him to keep his mouth shut.”

Evan snorts, no doubt having trouble with the concept of her and trauma in the same sentence. If only he knew. “That will buy us a few years, at least.” He stops, and sighs. “Then what, I don’t know. I can’t… Christie is the love of my life, Eveline.”

Lina watches him as he puts his head in his hands. Privately, she thinks that he should divorce her, marry Christie, and take what comes, but she doubts that will be the choice he makes. Evan Rosier ties his self-worth to his wealth, his power, and his status, and he can’t believe in a world where he could lose all those things and still be worth loving. And he _will_ lose half or more of his business if it comes out that he has a Muggleborn mistress, a son by a Muggleborn mistress, and if he casts off his pureblood, noble wife for her.

“We’ll deal with the heir issue as it comes,” Evan decides finally. “Christie… she’ll have to leave the Trust, and I can’t risk being seen too closely with her, or with Aldon. Would you…?”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Lina tilts her head. “Would I _what_ , Evan?”

“Look after them. Whatever happens, I want them looked after. Whether we’re married or not, whatever comes. Just look after them.” Evan’s hawk-like eyes are pleading, as if he knows what the future holds, but he doesn’t. No one does. He only knows that the world is getting more dangerous for people of less than pure blood, including his son and the woman he loves. “You and your… skills.”

Lina snorts, but finds herself agreeing anyway. It’s not Aldon’s fault that his father is a bit of a coward, and his mother is too soft, or that they’ve brought him into an insane world that will set up a thousand barricades to say that he isn’t good enough. He’ll at least have her, and maybe she can teach him enough to break through them all.

Christie moves to a tiny townhouse in Manchester, in a blue-collar, middle-class neighbourhood, a month-old baby in tow. Her resignation from the Rosier Investment Trust is barely noticed. Evan pays support, a respectable amount that Christie scrimps and saves for seed money for her own business while working by day as a receptionist in a Muggle car rental agency and paying exorbitant daycare prices.

Lina takes longer, more difficult contracts abroad. In time, she and Evan do divorce, a scandal that rocks Wizarding Britain in 1980 as he pins it on her and her refusal to produce an heir for him. Lina doesn’t even deny it, admitting quite happily that everything he says is true, and the courts can’t help but grant it. The money that Evan is able to send without being noticed only covers the basics, but there are certain other expenses that need be paid, and Lina just can’t keep up the ruse of being Lady Rosier while finishing mercenary contracts to pay for it all. Aldon needs a very quiet noble etiquette tutor, the best duelling instructor that money can buy, and tuition fees for one of the major schools abroad. It’s not what he would have gotten if he were the acknowledged Rosier Heir, if Christie had given him up, but it’s something. And he gets something else for it, too.

He gets love. Every time Lina has time, a few weeks between contracts, she drops into Christie’s cozy townhouse in Manchester. There isn’t much space, especially not compared to the massive Rosier Place, but Aldon is a warm, sweet child, always chattering about something on the Muggle telly. He loves Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood, and while Lina thinks both shows are teaching him to be far too soft, he is happy, and he calls her Auntie Lina.

She supposes she can wait to break the news of the world to him.

* * *

Aldon is five, and he goes to school. School isn’t that much of a change for him, because it’s just a bigger version of daycare, and he already knows how to read. He tells his classmates that he’s a wizard, and that’s okay. Robbie who sits beside him is a dragon, and Emily is a unicorn. He hates the jumper, and the tie, but he likes that Mum is working more from home, now. She doesn’t need to work at that place that smells like fake leather and oil anymore, and she has more time for him too.

But Auntie Lina says that he needs other lessons, lessons that aren’t like the ones at school, lessons that she makes him promise never, _ever_ to talk about at school. These lessons are boring, all about Lords and Ladies and how to bow and how to talk and who is related to whom. He might only be five, but he doesn’t know any of these people. He doesn’t see how they’re important at all, and he hates spending his evenings and weekends studying with stern Master Shafiq when he could be playing football outside with his friends.

He makes the mistake of complaining about it, one day.

“I don’t want to study noble etiquette,” he says, when Mum rouses him out of bed on a Saturday morning. “It’s _boring_. I want to go play with Robbie.”

Mum looks at him for a bit, and then she wraps him in a hug. “I’m sorry, Aldon,” she replies, and from her voice, Aldon really does think she is sorry. “But this is important, sweetheart. Go to your lesson, Master Shafiq won’t wait forever, and I’ll talk to Auntie Lina, okay? You can play football with Robbie after your lessons.”

He sighs, the huge sigh of a world-weary five-year-old. “Okay, Mum.”

“You’ll be good for Master Shafiq, won’t you?”

Aldon nods, pouting, but he goes to his lessons with good grace.

Three weeks later, Mum and Auntie Lina sit him down between them, and Auntie Lina explains some facts about the world to him. Aldon isn’t just Aldon Blake, and his family isn’t just his Mum and Auntie Lina. He has a dad, who just isn’t part of his life, and his dad is Lord Evan Rosier, a Book of Copper noble in Wizarding Britain. Master Shafiq has made him study the Rosiers in close detail, the Rosiers and their many family members, and they are his dad, his cousins, his family too. But he isn’t really one of them, because his Mum wasn’t married to his dad.

“Why didn’t you marry him after, then?” he asks, frowning. It seems like such an easy solution to him, because Master Shafiq has taught him enough to know that his dad isn’t married. And if they married, they could be a family. “Or you could marry him now!”

Mum and Auntie Lina exchange a glance. Mum has a sad, worried look on his face, while Auntie Lina is serious.

“Étienne,” Auntie Lina says, because she always calls him by his second name, not his first, not that he knows why. “I’m going to explain something about the world to you, all right? It’s not a nice thing, and it’s not an easy thing, but it’s something you need to know.”

Aldon nods, waiting. He’s very smart, for a five-year-old. His teachers tell him so all the time. They want to accelerate him through his studies, but his Mum says it’s better for him to stick to the kids his own age.

“In our world, there are witches and wizards, like you and I and your mum.” Auntie Lina pauses, waiting for Aldon to nod again, to show that he was following. “And there are people who don’t have magic like we do, who are Muggles, like your friends at school. Our world, the world of witches and wizards and magic, is secret from the Muggle one, and most of us don’t have much to do with the Muggle world. Within our world, the magical one, there are some witches and wizards who are what we call _pureblood_ , who have magic from all four of our grandparents, like me. And there are witches and wizards that we call Muggleborn, who were born into entirely Muggle families and didn’t know about magic until they went to school, like your mum. And then there are wizards like you, who are in-between, who have less than four magic-using grandparents but grow up in magic, who are halfbloods.”

“So?” Aldon frowns, putting the pieces together. He understands it, and he has a bit of a foreboding feeling. Master Shafiq has already taught him about the Sacred Twenty-Eight, twenty-eight families who had been deemed to be pureblooded, a position of high prestige.

The Rosiers had been on it, he remembers. The Rosiers had made it on that most prestigious list of all pureblood families. And his dad is a Rosier, but he is not a Rosier, and he is not a pureblood. Because he is not a pureblood?

“In the magical world, being a pureblood is very important,” Auntie Lina continues, her voice final. “Your dad is a pureblood, and your mum is a Muggleborn. They couldn’t marry, but they had you anyway. And you’re a halfblood, but you’re still the blood heir to the Rosiers. You need to know the things that Master Shafiq is teaching you for when you take the title, so you have to study hard. Do you understand?”

Aldon doesn’t, but he tries. He nods, accepting that even if he doesn’t really understand yet, that his lessons are important. “But can I join the football league? Robbie is in the football league. I want to play more football. I promise I’ll study hard if I can join the football league.”

Auntie Lina looks over at Mum, a bemused look on her face, but Mum smiles. “If Auntie Lina says it’s okay, then I’ll register you tomorrow.”

Auntie Lina tilts her head slightly, thinking about it, but eventually she smiles too. “Why not? It’s good exercise. And being in shape would be good for you too.”

Aldon beams, because playing football is far more important to him than boring noble history and etiquette lessons.

* * *

Aldon is eight years old when he first picks up a wand. It’s earlier than most, and they go to Ollivanders in Diagon Alley, the beating heart of Wizarding London, to get it. He has to put on robes for it, and somehow putting on robes feels like adding insult to injury.

He does understand more about the world now, about the gap he spans between the Muggle world and the magical one. He has never met his father, but he understands very well that even if his father pays support, the Lord Evan Rosier threw him and his mother away because of their blood statuses. He even understands that his father threw Aunt Lina away, because Aunt Lina is asexual and isn’t interested in anyone that way, and she wouldn’t give him a legal heir.

Mum and Aunt Lina make excuses for him and tell him it’s a little more complicated than that. He can accept that his father and Aunt Lina got married for reasons entirely their own and that it was never a real marriage, but he gets stuck on one single point: at the end of the day, no matter how much his father might have loved his Mum, she wasn’t good enough for him. He and his mum, with their halfblood and Muggleborn blood-statuses, are not good enough for his father to acknowledge openly, and they receive very little from him compared to the vast Rosier wealth.

He is eight years old, and he already burns with the injustice of it.

He hates walking down Diagon Alley, in robes a little too big for him (he wears robes so rarely that Aunt Lina only gets him a set every few years), because people stare at him, and his mum, and Aunt Lina. They know who he is, or at least they have a very good idea, because he is his father in miniature: black hair, golden-orange eyes, a delicate, almost exotic nose and chin. He wishes he took more after his Mum, the one parent who was actually there for him, but all he has from her family is his size. He’s already small for his age, and he beat up Eric at school for picking on him for it. For that, and for having ugly eyes and what he called a stupid name.

Mum was upset, but Aunt Lina thought he showed good initiative and drive, which was why she had decreed that it was time for Aldon to start duelling lessons. Eric had a good stone on him, but Aldon was faster, and he packed a meaner punch—with a wand and duelling instruction, Aunt Lina thought he would learn some discipline.

The bells above the wand shop jingle when they enter, a discreet door labelled _Ollivanders, Est. 323 BC._ Aldon has serious questions about those numbers, because even if Master Shafiq says that Ollivander is one of the oldest magical families in Britain, 323 BC stretches to the pre-Roman era, far before invasions of the Angles and the Saxons, let alone the Norman French. 323 BC is _Celtic_ Britain, and Ollivander is not a Celtic name. It’s an obvious lie, and his magical core wrenches a little in discomfort.

But he keeps his thoughts to himself as he and his Aunt Lina enter the shop.

“Hello. Rare that I see any young’uns at this time of the year.” An old man appears from the back storeroom, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth. His light, gold-flecked eyes linger on Aunt Lina and on Aldon for a minute. “Mistress Ducharme, Master…?”

“Blake,” Aunt Lina finishes easily, one arm around Aldon’s shoulders. “We’re looking to get his first wand.”

The old man hesitates, his eyes flicking back to Aunt Lina. “I understood your…”

He lets the words trail off in the air curiously, and Aunt Lina rolls her eyes. “Divorce, Ollivander. You can say the word. And he’s not my son, as you should be able to tell by his name. Wands?”

Ollivander hesitates, and Aldon scowls, shoving his hands into his uncomfortable robe pockets. He loves Aunt Lina, but he wishes Mum were with him. Aunt Lina has an abrasive way about her, which always puts others on the defensive, but Mum is soft, soothing while being convincing.

“He doesn’t appear to be eleven years old, yet?” Ollivander says, voice delicate. “As you know, Mistress Ducharme, in general children are not permitted wands until they are preparing to go to school…”

“Cut the crap, Ollivander.” Aunt Lina places one hand on the rickety desk between them. “We both know that you bend the rules for nobles, and that every child from a prominent or noble pureblood family will have a wand in their hands and basic spell-casting tutors by the time they are nine.”

“Yes, but…” Ollivander releases a breath slowly. “It is difficult to deny nobles, or those from prominent families, but it is the law.”

“Aldon _is_ a noble, as you’ve no doubt guessed,” Lina retorts, voice sharp. “A blood noble.”

“A bastard.” The old man’s eyes flicker to Aldon, apologetic, but Aldon doesn’t accept the apology. He scowls back. He hates the word. _Bastard_. Just like _halfblood,_ it’s one of the words used to tell him that he isn’t good enough.

“So?” Aunt Lina shrugs. “He’s a noble, and so am I. His background isn’t his fault, and why should he have to wait for a wand when every noble child will have one in hand before they are nine? He needs it more than they do, as a halfblood noble bastard. Maybe you should sell your wands based on who _needs_ them, not on who clamours more, Ollivander.”

“And yet, it is nobles and the prominent families that are likeliest to put me out of business.” The man sighs, but he turns around and starts ruffling through the boxes at the back of the store, bringing out a selection of a dozen boxes. “Let’s start with hawthorn, then. Hawthorn and dragon heartstring?”

Aldon tries it, but nothing happens. He knows it isn’t a fit, so he moves on. It is interesting, how different wands respond to him. There is one wand, with applewood and unicorn hair, that practically leaps out of his hand the second he touches it, and another made from elm that visibly shudders when he reaches for it. He doesn’t even bother with that one.

He knows the right wand immediately when he picks it up. There’s a heat that runs through the wood, rumbling against his magic, almost like purring, and the second he waves it, a golden shower of sparks appears. It’s _his_ wand, and it feels like a part of him already.

“Blackthorn and dragon heartstring,” Ollivander mutters, eyeing Aldon with a new respect, or maybe it is apprehension, or even fear. “A fighter, that one.”

Aunt Lina smirks. “In this world, he has to be.”

He meets his duelling instructor a week later. Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody is terrifying, an old Stormwing famed for losing one of his eyes in combat, and having replaced it with a magic, electric blue eye that spins wildly in its socket, seeing everything. Moody doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of him, which Aldon begins to suspect is probably a general Stormwing trait, and he puts Aldon through his paces. Aldon’s slight build and years of Muggle football mean that he is fast, with quick footwork and better stamina, and he picks up duelling easily. His style is built on dodging, sheer speed, and quick and brutal retaliation.

* * *

Aldon Blake never goes to Hogwarts. The Hogwarts Board of Governors passes a resolution against admitting anyone with less than four magical grandparents in 1981, and he does not have four magical grandparents in his family tree. Instead, on September 1, 1988, he hugs Mum and Aunt Lina goodbye and boards a plane at Terminal M at Heathrow International Airport.

Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is his destination. It’s the oldest school in Wizarding America, it has the strongest programs internationally for magical theory, runes and alchemy. It’s also where Mum went, so that’s where he’ll go.

He finds his seat easily. It’s 29G and he slips into the window seat. He has only rarely been to London, so he stares out onto the tarmac, watching the other planes go by.

“Hey,” someone says beside him, and Aldon looks up. The boy is a little taller than him, but gangly, and he looks nervous. His accent is Scottish, and he has a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. “Is this seat taken?”

Aldon lets out a small laugh. “They’re all taken. We have seat numbers on our tickets, if you didn’t notice.”

“Oh,” the boy says, looking a little sheepish. “Well, I mean, my ticket says I sit here. 29F. I was trying to be polite before I just, you know, sat down. Tobias McLean.”

“Aldon Blake,” Aldon replies, extracting his hand from his bag and reaching out to shake. ”Ilvermorny, first-year. You?”

“Same.” Tobias grins, sitting down. “So, are you excited? I am! My family’s all non-magical, you know, and I never knew the weird things I could do were magic until the woman from the ICW showed up! I mean, it sucks that I can’t stay close to home, they say that the British school is right in Scotland, but they don’t accept people from non-magic backgrounds, I guess.”

“They don’t,” Aldon replies, frowning in strong disapproval. He doesn’t care about not going to Hogwarts, it’s just one school among many, but he does care that he and every halfblood or Muggleborn is basically being kicked out of country to school elsewhere. They aren’t welcome in their own homeland, that tells him, but he isn’t sure he should be throwing that out at this boy before they’ve even left the ground. “It’s fine, though, Ilvermorny is a great school. My mum went there. She’s like you, from a non-magical family, so I can’t go to Hogwarts either. I’m half, they say.”

“Kind of sucks though, doesn’t it?” Toby sighs, leaning his head against the seat in front of him. “I mean, there are a lot of schools, but it’s so far away. Can we even follow football in America? I hear American football is weird.”

“The magical world has its own sports, so probably not,” Aldon admits with a grimace. “I’m not looking forward to that part, either. Manchester United is going to win this year.”

The other boy snorts. “Man U? No way. English Premier League, it’s going to Arsenal. You from Manchester?”

“Yeah,” Aldon says, jumping to the defense of his beloved team. “Man U was _second_ in the league last year, Tobias, and their roster this year is amazing. They’re _going_ to win it.”

“Sure, Aldon.” Tobias laughs. “But Arsenal is on a streak, so I don’t think they’ll overcome it. My team is Celtic FC. I’m from Glasgow. And call me Toby.”

“The Celtics are good,” Aldon offers, settling down a little, like a bird whose feathers were ruffled. “The Celtics are the best team in the Scottish League.”

“They are, aren’t they?” Tobias grins broadly, and the beginning of a friendship are formed. They chatter over football half the journey, until Toby falls asleep on Aldon’s shoulder and Aldon, tired from an early morning Portkey into London from Manchester and a last breakfast in London with Mum and Aunt Lina, falls asleep too.

Ilvermorny is a huge castle, bigger than anything Aldon has ever seen before. The first-years are divided into groups, fifteen to twenty each, and given tours of the grounds until the Sorting Ceremony, an expansive event in the grand Atrium which opens onto six huge balconies above. Only the first years, the professors, and the dozens of prefects are allowed on the first floor; the remaining eight hundred or so students crowd the balconies of the floors above, watching the traditional Choice.

Aldon stares out from a crowd of a hundred and twenty first years. There are four statues, one in each corner of the room, and the floor is dominated by a huge Gordian knot, the same symbol that decorates Aldon’s new navy blue school robes, his cranberry jumper and blue-and-cranberry striped tie. It’s the symbol of Ilvermorny, one of the most democratic and least elitist schools in the world, just as one would expect of a school founded in the union between a mage and a Muggle.

Aldon’s eyes flicker to the four statues in the corners, and Toby is beside him, uncharacteristically silent. There’s the House of Horned Serpent, the home of scholars, where his mother once resided, and there’s Pukwudgie, the house of Healers. There’s Thunderbird, the home of the wanderers, and Wampus, the panther, the house of warriors. The school always gives the students a choice of at least two Houses, and Aldon hopes fervently that at least one of his choices will be either Horned Serpent or Wampus. He’s enough like his mother that being in Horned Serpent appeals to him, but he’s angry, carrying on his shoulders a deep-seated rage at the world, so he thinks Wampus might be a better fit. He carries a wand of blackthorn and dragon heartstring, he has three years of duelling instruction from Stormwing Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody under his belt already, and he’s a fighter.

Toby, standing beside him, is nervous, shifting his feet, but Aldon doesn’t worry. He is Aldon Étienne Blake, bastard, blood noble, halfblood, and the Gordian knot at the centre of the Atrium does not frighten him.

With a name starting with a _B_ , Aldon is called early, so he pats his new friend on the shoulder and steps out into the middle of the floor. Each statue has its own sign for acceptance: the Horned Serpent glows from a stone on its forehead, the Thunderbird beats its great wings, the Wampus roars, and the Pukwudgie raises its arrow into the air. Aldon reaches the centre of the knot, and he waits, a single drop of silence.

And the Wampus roars, and the Horned Serpent’s jewel glows. It is his choice now, and without hesitation, he makes it.

“Wampus House, please,” he says, British accent marking him as one of Ilvermorny’s many British halfblood and Muggleborn students. Ilvermorny takes them all, every Muggleborn and halfblood who can’t afford to go elsewhere, a robust financial aid system covering the ones who can’t pay the fees. Nearly a tenth of the school is British. But Aldon is different, a blood _noble_ , and he already plans on setting the world on fire.

Toby chooses to join him in Wampus House, not even an hour later, and the two of them become fast friends. They room together in the huge, almost stable-like Wampus dormitories, they join the Ilvermorny British Students Association together, and Toby becomes the first year rep. Aldon, in return, forces his new friend to join Duelling Club with him.

Saiorse Riordan, Irish, traditional Celtic caster and future High Priestess of the Tuatha Dé, joins them the next year. They become a threesome as strong as any other.

* * *

Aldon discovers his gift at the end of the second year. He’s always had traces of it, here and there, but it was never reliable, just a sixth sense that made him uncomfortable when someone lied near him. He wakes up on his birthday, his core brimming with magic he isn’t used to carrying yet, and he knows things are different. Things are sharper, somehow, and he calls out three people for lying that morning.

“Christ, Al, _chill_ ,” Toby says, one eyebrow raised. “I know it’s your thirteenth birthday, but you’re _prickly_ today. Did you really need to ream out that sixth-year for cheating on his girlfriend? And in the middle of the dining hall, too.”

“He can come at me later,” Aldon scoffs, and he yawns. Toby had his birthday a few months ago, so he must know the feeling, but new magic and new gifts are _exhausting_. Aldon feels like his brain has processed three computers’ worth of data already, and it isn’t even noon. “I couldn’t just sit there and let him spew all those lies out to Marjorie, could I? It’s his fault for seeing Flora behind her back!”

“He’s going to get a crowd of his friends together and come after you,” Toby predicts darkly. “I don’t care _how_ good you are at duelling, he’s going to kill you. Goodbye, Aldon. It was good knowing you.”

“I’ll save you.” Saoirse looks up from her lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich that she’s dipping into a bowl of tomato soup. “Don’t worry, Al. I got your back.”

Toby glares at her. “You’re a _first-year_ , Saiorse. You’re going to die, too. Why am I the only one with any sense around here?”

From Ilvermorny, it’s easy for Aldon to discover everything there is to know about his gift. He is at the strongest school for magical theory in the world, and every reference book he needs is at his fingertips. He doesn’t have much time before the summer holidays, so he crams in as much as he can, finds the best reference book, and convinces Ilvermorny’s librarian to let him have it for the summer. Even that doesn’t say much, but it tells him all he needs to know.

He is a Truth-Speaker, one of the Chosen of the Incarnation of Justice. In the past, Incarnations were worshipped as gods, or something like gods; the modern explanation is that Incarnations are the physical embodiment of a _concept_ , something that so many people believe in that it takes on a life of its own. They are extremely powerful in their domains, but often their powers are constrained in other ways.

As a Truth-Speaker, Aldon is a living lie detector. It is a very tightly constrained type of Legilimency, and as long as the person intends on deception, he can read the lie. Occlumency doesn’t work on him, not for lies, even if he doesn’t have the broader Natural Leglimency talent which would let him follow others’ surface thoughts. He can also summon the Incarnation of Justice, if given access to an old-style courtroom with the prescribed runic circles. Many of the oldest courthouses have at least one summoning circle carved into one of their primary courtrooms, though they are very rarely used. Even in Wizarding America, they were used only for mass terrorism cases, and the last trial by Justice that had been attempted was in 1926, for the capture of Gellert Grindelwald. Grindelwald had escaped before the end of his trial, ending the whole affair, but the Americans had tried. Aldon knows, from the records kept in America, that summoning Justice requires possession of the Truth-Speaker, and he hopes fervently that he’ll never be called upon to do it.

It seems unlikely. Even in Wizarding Britain, the last recorded summoning of Justice was in the fifteenth century, so if Aldon is lucky, the British have completely forgotten the gift exists. That seems to be the case, anyway; Master Shafiq, his noble etiquette tutor from before he went to school, had said off-hand a few times that only pureblood families carried unique magical gifts. Truth-Speakers have only ever been halfbloods, and the gift was not one that carried beyond a generation.

Aldon learns, over the next few months and years, that he is exceptionally powerful even for a Truth-Speaker. If he concentrates, he can differentiate the different types of lies: some people, like his mother, only lie because they want to please others, or they don’t want to hurt others. Other people lie with no regrets, and still others don’t lie outright, but twist the truth in other ways. Aldon can read them all, and he find the skill exceedingly useful.

For his third year, he starts shifting his studies towards Runes and Magical Theory; Magical Theory for himself, because he is interested in it, and Runes because Aunt Lina and Master Moody think it useful. Runes are a fully-fledged system of their own, a magical system that doesn’t rely on a thin stick of wood, and so many mages are dependent on their wands. It is useful to have a working knowledge of a secondary casting method, just in case he doesn’t have his wand close to hand, one day.

In any case, as he learns the next year, Ilvermorny is famous on the Triwizard Tournament for their dual-casting mages. Their team members, including Aldon’s own Duelling Captain, Graeme Queenscove, are all proficient in at least two methods of spell-casting, and in Graeme’s case, three. They’re fast, clever, and brutal.

Aldon loves it. He loves the entire thing, from the solemn Ilvermorny Ceremonies in the autumn, when they send the candidates out into the Appalachian wilderness for a night, stripped of everything except their clothes and their wands, and tell them that the last four standing at the top of Mount Greylock at dawn will be the team, with full authority to select their own supports. He loves the matches, both the pool rounds and the eliminations, and he watches every single game in the grand Ilvermorny Atrium with most of the school. Graeme is their star player, leading Ilvermorny through three resounding victories in the pools, even against his own brother on the Collège team, and they pull victories against Beauxbatons in the quarter-final and Castelbruxo in the semi-finals, facing off against the legendary National Magic School of China in the finals. They lose, but just _barely_ , and Aldon cheers and cries for Ilvermorny as much as he does for Man U.

Toby and Saoirse laugh at him, a little, but Aldon has a new goal, by the end of it.

“We have to get on the team, next time,” he pants, swinging one arm around Toby’s shoulders, and the other around Saoirse’s. “The Triwizard Cup—it’ll be ours. _Ours_. Get training, both of you. You have three and a half years.”

Toby makes a face. “How about I leave that to the two of you, and just become your strategist? I’m shit on the Duelling circuit, Al, and you know it.”

“That’ll work too.” Aldon grins. “Saoirse?”

“I’m in,” the girl says, her smile bright as she slips an arm around Aldon’s waist. “1995, we’ll be the Ilvermorny Triwizard team, Aldon. We’ll show the world what we can do.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

* * *

Before Aldon is a seventh year, before the pivotal 1994-1995 Triwizard Tournament, many things happen. He opts for a Mastery in Magical Theory, with a minor concentration in Runes, and nearly all his classes outside the basic five become either Runes or Magical Theory related. Where he has an open timeslot, he takes another Duelling or Defense class, but he doesn’t worry too much about those because, with Master Moody instructing him over the summers and the Duelling Club every year, he’s easily on par with everyone in the Defense Mastery programs.

His training goes beyond what is merely in Duelling, however. The duelling circuit has rules, particularly involving exclusive wand magic and no physical methods, and Master Moody sees to it that Aldon receives training on rune use in duelling and quite a lot of other self-defence. Aldon has always been able to throw a punch, and he’s gotten into more than one scrap over the years, but Moody teaches him how to do it better. And when he is fourteen, Moody hands him a gun.

Aldon likes his gun. He understands that it’s not something that he can pull out whenever, and it is a great responsibility, but he likes the weight of it in his left hand. He likes the precision involved in shooting, especially if he’s shooting in a fight, and he likes how _instinctual_ his timing has to be. He just has to know, because there is no time to think in a fight.

On the duelling circuit, he does well—very well. But his fourth year is when he meets his _nemesis_ , his _archrival_ on the duelling circuit, the first year they both make the top sixteen.

His name is Nealan Queenscove. He’s at the American Institute of Magic, and he has light brown hair, green eyes, and half a head on Aldon. Normally, Aldon thinks he would be slow, or at least slower than Aldon, but he’s not – as a Queenscove, Aldon has no doubt that he has the same martial training as his elder brother Graeme. He’s brutally fast, almost as fast as Aldon is but with a stronger core, and Nealan Queenscove makes the top eight on the duelling circuit in their fourth year when he eliminates Aldon Blake from the competition.

It’s a fluke, Aldon thinks, stewing over it for half the year, but he slams into Nealan Queenscove _again_ on the duelling circuit in his fifth year. Top sixteen again, and again they face off for the top eight. And again, Aldon is eliminated.

“Tough luck,” Queenscove says to him with a smile, when they shake hands. Queenscove looks to be an eminently friendly boy, and Aldon is usually friendly as well, but Aldon has never taken losing well. “But it was a good match! You almost had me, when you threw out that non-verbal _Stupefy_.”

“Next year,” Aldon retorts with a scowl. “You wait for _next year,_ Queenscove. I’ll have you next year!”

The boy laughs, delighted. “See you again next year, then.”

That next year is without a doubt the worst year. It’s their last year on the circuit, both of them, because next year is the Triwizard Tournament, and all the major competitions across the North American League are shut down for the Tournament. By now, both Aldon Blake and Nealan Queenscove are major names on the circuit. Aldon has been nominated Duelling Captain for Ilvermorny’s forty-strong Duelling brigade, while Queenscove seems to have forgone the captaincy in favour of a firecracker of a girl two years younger than him, Keladry Mindelan, who is starting to turn the Duelling world upside down.

This time, both Aldon and Queenscove make the top sixteen, and then they make the top eight. And then they both make the semi-finals, and Queenscove…

Queenscove loses to Keladry Mindelan, and Aldon, in a shocking upset, loses against a seventh year from Cascadia that he’s beat at least once before. And he doesn’t even have time to be upset about it, because he’s heading straight into the third-place match against Queenscove.

The other boy grins at him against the duelling ring. “Good to see you again,” he says, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.

Aldon scowls. He shouldn’t have lost the last match. He’s angry at himself for losing, but he’s also been trained too well by Master Moody and Aunt Lina, so he sets aside his upset for the moment. Toby has a recording orb, so Aldon can view his performance later and figure out what went wrong. “Let’s just get this done, Queenscove.”

“But banter is three quarters of the fun!” Queenscove complains, but the warning whistle blows, telling them to take their positions. Aldon shakes off his annoyance and marches over to the marked spot on the duelling field, as he has done so many times.

There’s the second warning whistle, and they both assume the guard position. A few moments of silence, when Aldon gets ready to _move_ , and then the start whistle blows.

And Aldon is gone – Queenscove’s first spell, a non-verbal Stupefy, hits the mark on the duelling ground where he was only a second earlier. He moves diagonally, firing spells as he goes – not aiming directly at Queenscove, but at the terrain. He slicks the quarter of the field where Queenscove is standing with ice, his magical element.

“I’m from _Montr_ _é_ _al,_ ” Queenscove yells at him from across the ring, a laugh in his voice. “Don’t you know how icy it gets there in the winter?!”

Aldon dodges the _Flipendo_ that Queenscove fired at him while he spoke, a clever trick, before he retorts, firing off a non-verbal _Bombarda_. “I figure being in the warm and balmy south has made you forget how to skate.”

“A Canadian _never_ forgets how to skate,” Queenscove replies, and in evidence, he slides halfway across the ice, executing a turn that Aldon hadn’t expected him to pull off, his wand already moving in another spell. Aldon throws out a shield without thought, holding it fast as three hard spells slam into it, rattling him. Queenscove isn’t pulling his punches. “I even played hockey when I was a kid, you know.”

“Football, for me. Proper football, I mean.” Aldon launches a rapid-fire combination – _Pertus, Expelliarmus,_ and _Stupefy_. On ice, there’s no way that Queenscove can move fast enough to dodge them all, and he only needs one of the latter two to hit.

“ _Soccer_.” Queenscove smirks, almost as if he knows Aldon will scowl and redouble his efforts the second he hears that hated word. He slides, apparently fearless of losing his balance, across the ice until he jumps off at the end of the frozen section, before turning to cast another set of spells. These slam into the ground, steps away from Aldon, and he is in the air, throwing himself out of the way before whatever they are can take effect.

 _No one_ on the circuit moves faster than Aldon Blake. It’s what he is known for – his ability to cover ground fast, and his even faster spellwork. He fires a Blinding Curse at Queenscove, which borders on the limits of acceptability for circuit duelling, following it up with a slowing spell. He hides a non-verbal _Stupefy_ just after the _Impedimenta,_ but to his dismay, Queenscove dodges it and slams a spell into the ground just in front of Aldon, hard.

The ground shakes with power, and Aldon leaps backwards, eyeing the spot on the ground warily, but nothing more happens. It’s only a minor earthquake spell, and Aldon spares only the briefest thought for why Queenscove even bothers with it before he turns to the offensive. He takes his time now, retreating to prepare a new strategy, and he sees Queenscove doing the same.

It’s one of those quiet pauses in the middle of a duel, a moment in which the duellers can breathe and try to stare each other down. Aldon takes his time; a duel is a mental game as much as it is a physical one, and if Aldon can intimidate Queenscove enough, he’ll have an edge.

Too bad that in every encounter they have had so far, Queenscove has come out on top. That means he has the edge, because Aldon is always, always conscious of the fact that he’s never won against Queenscove before. From the expression on Queenscove’s face, he knows it – he’s wearing a grin on the other side, waiting for Aldon to come at him. Circuit duels have a time limit of five minutes, with another five in overtime, and Aldon guesses that they’ve already burned through half the time. He doesn’t have long.

He tries another _Stupefy_ , another _Expelliarmus_ , but they’re half-hearted. He doesn’t think they’ll hit, and just as he expects, they don’t. Master Moody would have called them pointless, a waste of magic, and on the circuit they’ll count against him if it goes to referee’s choice. He needs to regroup.

Losing two fights against Queenscove before doesn’t mean anything for this fight, he reminds himself. He’s improved over the year, and every fight is a new one. And this year, this fight is for a _podium spot_ , and it’s his last chance to make it on the podium before he graduates. Next year is a Triwizard year, and that means no duelling competition.

It’s another breath before Aldon can launch himself back into the game. This round of spells is hard and fast, a combination of direct attack and area effect spells. He hits Queenscove with a stinging hex, but it’s not enough – Queenscove barely seems to notice the pain, retaliating with his own series of Stunners, slowing spells, and other hexes. The Stinging Hex will count in Aldon’s favour – he’s marked Queenscove now, so on referee’s decision, he’ll have the advantage.

Queencove’s barrage of spells pushes him back, fast and furious, looking to even the score or end the fight. It’s his last circuit duel too, and he looks prepared to throw the entirety of his core into it. Aldon keeps up, but Queenscove core is a bit stronger than his, but Aldon just has to push it to the finish line. It’s his very last duel on the North American League circuit, and Aldon wants to _win_.

Surrender, Stunning, or Referee’s Choice. These are the three ends to a circuit duel. The first two results are sure, guaranteed wins, while the last one is always a bit chancy. One _never_ wants a circuit duel to end by referee’s choice.

Queenscove is pushing him back, his stronger core helping, but Aldon’s spellwork is pristine. He fires off two, three spells into every opening he has, hiding a couple spells in other spells, all non-verbal. He’s so focused, so caught in the exchange, that he doesn’t notice that Queenscove is manoeuvring him to a very specific place on the duelling grounds. A place that he slammed an earthquake spell into earlier, the one that Aldon wondered about before being distracted.

He takes a step, just one more step for him, one like any other, but the ground crumples underneath him. Aldon twists in the air, rolling into position to fall, and lands in a deep, muddy pit.

Fuck.

“So…” he hears Queenscove drawl, ten feet above him, and he looks up to see a bright grin. “Surrender, or should I Stun you? Because at this level, it’s _literally_ going to be shooting fish in a barrel. You’re the fish, by the way.”

“Is this even a _legal_ move?” Aldon yells back, not that it really matters. If it isn’t, Queenscove will be disqualified from the match, leaving Aldon the winner.

Queenscove shrugs. “I knew if I was up against you, I’d have to push the limits, eh? And not like you can talk – I caught a Blinding Curse and about three Severing Curses in your blitz. So, surrender or Stunning?”

Aldon sighs, a heavy breath. Goddammit. He holds his hands up for the third time facing this boy. “I surrender. Now get me out of this hole, Queenscove.”

The judges rule that the trap was legal, if only barely, since there was next to no risk that Aldon would have been harmed. Aldon finishes his school Duelling career at fourth place – an entirely respectable place, but he has no shiny medals to bring home to his mother and a recording orb of his losing (twice!) to hand to Aunt Lina and Master Moody.

When he complains too much about it, Saoirse makes him a medal out of wood, asking the elements to buff it as brightly as possible for her. It’s a very nice medallion, a large _4 th_ carved in the middle and tied with a cranberry ribbon, and Aldon laughs to see it. It hangs on the corner of his bed, and he can’t help but think that at least, he has some pretty great friends.

* * *

Seventh year dawns, and Aldon is outrageously excited. Seventh year is the Triwizard Tournament. Seventh year is _his_ chance to fight to the top of Mount Greylock in the Ceremonies, then to lead Ilvermorny to the Triwizard Cup, which they haven’t seen in eight years. The Triwizard Tournament, and the Ceremonies, are also the first and only time that Aldon will ever be able to showcase his full skill. Until now, he’s practiced rune-casting with wand-casting in duelling only with Aunt Lina and Master Moody, and he can’t wait to show the rest of the world he can do.

He would have been excited in any case, but this year the rumours from Aunt Lina are that Hogwarts is playing. More than that, Hogwarts is _hosting_ , and Aldon is burning with the need to reveal himself to all of British wizarding society by putting one of Hogwarts’ precious pureblooded champions into the dirt. Anyone who knows British wizarding nobility will know Aldon to see him, because his family resemblance to the Rosiers has only become more marked in time. He is his biological father in miniature, and he will be a cause for comment, he is sure of it.

True to their promises, Saoirse is beside him, and Toby behind both of them, handling their strategy. Over the past three years, Saoirse has become incredibly powerful by traditional standards, though her duelling circuit rankings show no sign of it. As a wand-caster, Saoirse is only average, even a little weak, but as a traditional mage, few can compare. She is their surprise; everyone expects Aldon Blake, star Ilvermorny dueller and Captain of Ilvermorny Duelling, but no one expects Saoirse Riordan.

Toby makes them focus on the Ilvermorny Ceremonies first. The Ceremonies are a free for all, always taking place over Halloween night, where any student may enter. At sunset, Aldon is waiting with a hundred others on the Gordian knot, in the grand Atrium, wearing thick, dark jeans and a heavy black sweater, armed only with his wand.

Small, wooden discs are distributed to each of them, each hanging on a thin leather string, to be looped around their necks or wrists. Portkeys, Aldon realizes, taking one with the number _53_ carved on it. Saoirse has number _54_ , and she’s trembling with pent-up energy, ready for action. Aldon slings one arm over her shoulders, a quick embrace.

“I’ll find you,” she murmurs, so quiet that Aldon can barely hear it. “Remember the plan. Just go for it, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

He shoots her a quick, steady smile. Aldon Blake is the best dueller at Ilvermorny, and three quarters of this crowd already have him marked as a target. She’ll flank when she finds him, and together they plan to be on the top of Mount Greyjoy at dawn, even if it means carving through their schoolmates to do it.

The Portkeys take them each to random locations around the base of Mount Greyjoy, and the air is cold. This is Appalachia, and it’s the end of October, and Aldon is very happy for the two thermal shirts he has layered under his sweater. He can use a Heating Charm, of course, but why waste his magic on that if he doesn’t have to?

Aldon is a target, and he blows away two of his competitors before fifteen minutes are up. One falls to a non-verbal Stupefy, the other to _Petrificus Totalus_. He leaves them behind, doesn’t worry about them when there are ninety-five other students that he needs to eliminate. The Portkeys are programmed to activate when their holders are inactive for more than ten minutes or when their holders activate them and return to the school, surrendering.

The first two are just the start. Aldon finds himself beset by opponents, some of whom he knows from Duelling Club and many of whom he doesn’t, trying to overwhelm him when they have the benefit of numbers. It doesn’t matter – he wants his spot on the mountain, and he’ll fight past them all to do it. About half of them expect the dual-casting, but few of them would have expected that Aldon already knows how to dual-cast effectively in a fight. Runes are for delayed spells, tricks and area effect spells, while wands are for show and direct attacks. He hits someone with an ice spell, a tricky runic attack that lands nowhere too dangerous, uses a wide array of jinxes, curses, and hexes to break his way through. He blinds three.

Four of his opponents have decided to jump him jointly when Saoirse joins him. Aldon only feels a slight breeze, but his four opponents twitch, eyes wide, looking away from him for a single, critical instant.

One instant is all Aldon needs, and he casts three Stupefy spells to knock them out while Saoirse takes the last one.

“Took you long enough,” he says with a grin, wiping the sweat off his brow.

“They had me a mile away, to the east,” Saoirse says, then looks away to half-sing a liquid string of Gaelic. A breeze blows around them, warm and welcoming. “There. That should keep us hidden from anyone else looking to knock you out, or at least give us forewarning. You haven’t made nearly any progress up Mount Greyjoy, you know – there are at least forty people between us and the summit.”

“The higher up they go, the more they’ll fight each other,” Aldon replies, a little grim. “How many are left, can you tell?”

“I can ask,” she says, eyeing the trees around them carefully, “but it’ll take awhile for them to get an answer to me, which will probably be out of date by then anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Aldon nods, and they forge their way forwards, onwards and upwards. With Saoirse by his side, they are much better hidden, and they take another four groups by surprise and eliminate them before they’re even halfway up the mountainside.

It gets colder as it gets darker, and the sweat that Aldon worked up duelling cools, chilly, against his skin. They’re still moving, as quickly as they can, and a quiet _Tempus_ spell shows that it’s not even midnight. The first burst of attacks has slowed, and he and Saoirse are alone.

Toby predicted this. From the past Ceremonies, there is a furious round of attacks early in the night, as people try to take out as many people as possible, especially those known to be powerful. Then, there is always a long period of nothing in the middle, as the survivors of the early brawl move to climbing the mountain and making it through the cold of the night. Aldon’s counting on the night being relatively quiet – he’s blown more than half of his core in the early fights, and more than one talented fighter has been overwhelmed by numbers before. Saoirse is their key for avoiding that, because it is only with her magic hiding him that Aldon gets any peace. They still take out anyone they run against, but that’s rarer, now.

It takes four hours of hard climbing and hiking to reach the summit. They aren’t the first ones there – a team of three are already standing on the summit, which Aldon thinks might be the stupidest decision to make. He recognizes one of the three as one of his own duellers and shakes his head in silent disappointment.

“Take them out?” Saoirse suggests, he voice a whisper on the wind.

Aldon shakes his head. “No. They’re too open. Someone else will. We find a sheltered place within a hundred feet of here, and we hunker down and watch. A quarter-hour before dawn, we move and take out whoever is left.”

Saoirse nods, silent, and they creep off into a stony outcropping, shielded with some low-lying bushes, to wait for the dawn. They nap, a strict twenty minutes each, just enough for a second wind, before they have to move.

The pale predawn glow is ominous, and Aldon cautiously peers out from their outcropping of rocks towards the summit. There’s already fighting, people overeager to get things done, and he blows out an anxious breath. The trick with the morning fights is the timing; if they join too fast, they’re liable to be knocked off by a later competitor who timed things better, but if they join too late, they have a clear deadline and possibly not enough time to finish. Toby recommends about fifteen to twenty minutes before dawn, which Saoirse can time better than anyone else.

There are seven people duelling on the summit of Mount Greyjoy.

“Fifteen minutes. Let’s go,” Saoirse whispers to him, then she mutters something else and Aldon feels another warm breeze. “If we take them by surprise, we can take them out fast. Then I’ll ask the elements to warn us of anyone coming up.”

Aldon nods, and they’re moving, in action, slamming into one side of the brawl before anyone even realizes that they’re there. Aldon Stuns two before anyone turns to engage him, and the one who does is a fifth year, Duelling Club, whose eyes widen when he realizes he’s up against the Captain of Ilvermorny Duelling himself. Aldon grabs the moment of hesitation and Stuns him too. Jeremy had always had a hesitation problem.

Saoirse, beside him, has taken out one by surprise, and she’s duelling someone else, a Quodpot player who has three stone on her and obviously thinks he has her outmatched. He might, if it weren’t for chant that he can hear Saoirse singing, and the heavens open to rain. Aldon takes the moment of surprise to Stun someone else, completely ignoring how the icy rain soaks him, chills him to the bone.

This is the Ilvermorny Ceremonies, and he’s on the summit of Mount Greyjoy. He has work to do now, and he can be sick for the next two weeks if he wants.

“Peace!” Someone yells, and Aldon turns to face off against them. Chris Marcotte, standing beside Olga Zelinsky, a seventh-year and a fifth-year. He knows Chris from Runes, and it’s no surprise how he got here – one hand is already flashing through the rune for a shield, while Aldon holds one covering himself and Saoirse. “There’s room enough for the four of us here, so what do you say we team up? Us against everyone!”

Aldon hesitates, and he knows without saying that Saoirse is covering his back. Chris is a strong wizard, with a deep core and deeper skillset – Olga he barely knows, but if Chris teamed with her, then she is hiding something.

“Betray us and I’ll ask Saoirse to drive you mad,” he snaps. “Saoirse, how much time until dawn?”

“Five minutes, and we have three incoming from the north, another three from the west!”

“We’ll take the north,” Chris says, and he and Olga turn to face north. Aldon shoots Saoirse a look to keep an eye on them, and turns to the west.

To survive the night, everyone left has a chance of making it, and Aldon doesn’t think anymore. He blasts a runic ice spell at the three bearing down on them, and doesn’t waste time being surprised when the elements help him, flinging his icicles towards his opponents with wild force. His wand is already flying through a combination _Pertus/Stupefy_ , and he varies with two different Knockback Jinxes, the Blinding Curse, a Blasting Spell, a Bombardment Charm, and he summons _fire_. He dodges, taking advantage of the speed he is known for on the duelling circuit, and as more enter the battle, he faces them in turn.

“Sixty seconds!” he hears Saoirse shout, a little out of breath, and Aldon grits his teeth, bearing it out. She’s whistling, and he feels the elements coming to her aid, the ground shaking beneath their feet. Two of Aldon’s opponents fall down, not expecting the ground to start moving, and Aldon Stuns them.

“Ten!” Saoirse yells, and Aldon’s last Knockback Jinx lands and blows another one of his duelling club members off the summit. He takes a risk, looks to see who else is there: Chris is still standing, another rune coming off his fingers, while Olga is casting in a language Aldon doesn’t recognize but that he immediately guesses is Old Slavic. Her spell, whatever it is, drops the boy bearing down on them.

When the sun peeks over the horizon on November 1, 1994, it’s Aldon Blake, Saoirse Riordan, Chris Marcotte and Olga Zelinsky who make up the 1995 Ilvermorny Triwizard team.

XXX

After the Christmas holiday, they spend only a month in America before they’re on the plane back to Britain. Toby’s been busy the entire time; he’s Aldon’s strategist, Saoirse picking an Irish fifth-year for hers, but he’s the lead for communications with the other British students from North America. Before they step on the plane back home, there are endless meetings to go over lodging, security, a million other details meant to keep their teams safe in a country notoriously hostile to newbloods and halfbloods.

The first time Aldon Blake meets Hermione Granger is John F. Kennedy aeroport in New York City, just before they fly for the Tournament. He’s heard her voice before, even recognizes her vaguely from the annual flights to and from Britain, but the AIM students sit close to the front of the plane while Ilvermorny is near the back. He’s never had any reason to talk to her before.

“Wizarding Britain is unstable,” she’s saying, and everyone around her, listening, is British, Scottish, Irish. “One of my friends was at the SOW Party Gala – it’s the economy. They’re staggering, and the trade embargoes are starting to price some magical commodities out of reach. Wards are the biggest issue.”

Aldon leans forward, his attention caught by her first few lines, and he ignores most of the rest. “You have a friend who went to the _SOW Party Gala?_ ”

His voice is a little accusatory, and Hermione frowns. “A few, actually. Formally, the SOW Party Gala is a fundraising event, so a lot of people attend who aren’t in the SOW Party, you know.”

Aldon is mentally reviewing the entire AIM team in his head. He studied the teams in detail over the winter holidays, and it looked like all the North American schools, as well as the Oceania Institute, had gone out of their way to stack their team with British newbloods and halfbloods. Sean Docherty, one of Saoirse’s Irish friends, had made it onto the Cascadia team, and he recognized the Scamander name from the Oceania Institute as well. He had paused over _Harry Potter_ , from AIM, because Peverell House had been held by the Potters since the fifteenth century, but Harry Potter is such a common name, and the Potter Heiress is named Harriett. But then, he had been distracted by the fact that Nealan Queenscove, his nemesis, hadn’t made it onto the AIM team proper, and had spent a good fifteen minutes dreaming about finding him at the Tournament and mocking him for it. As far as he could remember, however, no one on the AIM team would have been of the status to attend anything like the SOW Party Gala.

“The SOW Party Gala is still a who’s who of Wizarding British Society,” he replies, waving a hand and marking the point for later. Five years on, Toby, Aunt Lina and Master Moody have all finally managed to teach him how to hold his tongue—sometimes. “Consider me curious, Hermione, that’s all. Go on.”

Hermione looks a little suspicious, but she goes on anyway, while Aldon privately resolves to take another, closer, look at the AIM team. Hermione is a newblood, so it isn’t very likely that she would meet someone within the British wizarding society other than at school.

It’s that night, dressed in a suit with the school-issued blue and cranberry tie and Ilvermorny pin on his chest, that he meets Francesca Lam.

She is across the room when he, Toby and Saoirse enter. His initial scan of the room is just habit. He always scans a room, when he first walks in—one summer of being ambushed by Master Moody and Aunt Lina on entering rooms, and he’s learned that it’s better to be cautious. His eyes catch first on a dark-haired boy, dressed in a suit a bit too large for him with a sky-blue tie, and his gift screams that the boy is _lying_ _._

He doesn’t know who the boy is, other than an AIM student. He can’t even hear anything the boy is saying, from this side of the room. It has to be something else. His appearance? It could be a glamour, just someone trying to look their best, but in Aldon’s experience people under glamour or makeup spells don’t tend to trigger his magic. His gift reacts to _deception_ , and most people don’t think that they’re lying when they use glamour or makeup spells, only that they’re being their best possible selves.

Saoirse and Toby pick up on his attention right away, and their guards come up, but then—

Then Aldon’s eyes slide to another one of the girls at that table. She is sitting beside someone he recognizes from the duelling circuit, John Kowalski, who broke top eight last year. Her hair is long, dark, put half up in knot at the back of her head, while the rest of it spills down her back, and her dark eyes are shining in amusement. Her sky-blue gown reveals slim, golden-brown shoulders that seem perfect, and there are ruby and gold earrings dangling from her earlobes, bright against dark waves. They match the delicate ruby resting at her neck.

She’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen.

Saoirse smacks him on the arm. “Eyes. What’s wrong with you?”

Aldon doesn’t know where to start, but the chair beside the pretty girl is empty. “I don’t know yet. Let’s go sit at that table, with AIM.”

“What?” Toby hisses, but Aldon is already on his way, sliding into the empty seat beside that beautiful girl.

“Hello,” he says, pleased to hear that he doesn’t sound quite as out of breath as he feels. “My name is Aldon Blake. I’m from Ilvermorny. What’s yours?”

“Excuse our friend,” he hears Toby, sounding deeply embarrassed, saying behind him. “He’s kind of an idiot sometimes. Maybe all of the time.”

“I think we all have our idiot moments,” Kowalski replies, amused, but Aldon is entirely focused on the girl in front of him. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen this before.”

The girl is shying away from him slightly, a bit intimidated, and Aldon checks his body language to make sure he is as unthreatening as possible. She might be nervous, or easily frightened, but she’s won a spot in the Triwizard Tournament and that means there has to be more to her than meets the eye.

“Francesca Lam,” she says eventually, and her voice is soft, quiet. “I’m from AIM – a strategist. For, um—”

She glances to her right, towards Kowalski, who gives Aldon a sharp grin and Aldon feels a warning tap on his mental shields. A Legilimens, and Aldon knows enough of the big names in Wizarding America to know the Kowalski name. He’s probably inherited the gift, Natural Legilimency. Interesting.

“Toby is my strategist,” Aldon says, friendly, glancing over the rest of the table. Aside from Kowalski and the liar boy, there’s also Hermione Granger. “And Saiorse, my teammate.”

“Tobias McLean, and Saoirse Riordan.” Toby gives the formal introduction, nodding towards the table. “Hermione. Have a good flight?”

Hermione smiles back at them, though her eyes rest curiously on Aldon for the second time that day. “It was fine, or as good as you can expect for a five-hour flight.”

“I don’t suppose anyone is sitting here, are they?” Toby grins, a little sheepish. “I mean, I can drag Aldon away if you were saving your table for anyone, but—”

“Have I mentioned that I’m the captain of the Ilvermorny Duelling Team?” Aldon breaks in, addressing the vision in the sky-blue dress in front of him. Closer up, he can see that her dress is made of a light, breezy fabric, draping delicately over her modest curves, and he can’t help but wonder if she’s chilly. “Fourth on the circuit, last year.”

“I – I see,” the girl says, exchanging a glance with Kowalski, who looks about ready to burst into laughter. “Um—weren’t you eliminated by Neal, last year?”

Aldon winces, while Saoirse laughs. “Ooh, fatal blow. He’s down for the count.”

“I, um, I’m sorry,” the girl, Francesca, splutters, looking away quickly. “I didn’t realize – um, I don’t – I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Aldon’s smile is weak, but it is still a smile, and she glances over at him and a tiny smile flutters across her face too. Tiny it might be, but it makes a world of difference – her eyes crinkle a little, and her nose twitches, and she looks so shy and embarrassed that he can’t help but edge himself closer, just a little closer. “You’re beautiful when you smile, you know.”

His friends groan, but she laughs, which lights up her whole face. In that moment, Aldon _understands_ —god damn it all, but he is his mother’s son, and it turns out that he falls just as quickly and as intensely as Christina Blake once fell for the Lord Evan Rosier. If this beautiful girl wants to stomp all over his heart, he thinks he might just lie down and let her do it for the few weeks, months or years that he’ll get to share with her.

“You might as well sit,” an unknown voice adds, his voice accented with a soft British accent, smothering a laugh. Aldon looks up, identifying the liar boy with a quick look, and he very carefully keeps the scowl from coming across his face. “Harry Potter—nice to meet you.”

Aldon’s core twists immediately, and he knows that his friends can read the shift in his posture already. He doesn’t like liars, or lying, any more than any other person with his gift would. A lie of this magnitude isn’t just uncomfortable, it _hurts_ , it burns in his core like fire. His instinct is to call the boy out, tell him to stop lying, force him to reveal to everyone just what he’s hiding. His appearance is a lie, and his name is probably a lie as well. He’s an impostor, a fake, and Aldon looks at him and reads a _threat_.

But Kowalski is stiff too. A fellow dueller, Aldon can read the signs. Kowalski sees that Aldon is ready to pounce, and he’s ready to respond in kind. And Aldon comes back to himself, just enough to realize that this is not the time to rip away the lie. They’re at the traditional North American League banquet, an opportunity for the players and teams from North America to meet and mingle before the war games start, and he remembers that _Harry Potter_ on the AIM team is a Healer anyway. An attack on a _player_ might be laughed over later, but no one appreciates an attack on a Healer.

As a Natural Legilimens, Kowalski probably knows the secret, Aldon realizes. If the liar boy is British, and with that accent he likely is, and he’s in North America for schooling, then he is most likely a legal halfblood or a newblood. As either a halfblood or a newblood, it isn’t very likely that he would have received Occlumency training before starting at AIM, so Kowalski almost certainly knows whatever it is that Potter is hiding. And Kowalski is ready to jump to the defense of his friend, so maybe the secret isn’t worth chasing, right now. He considers launching a mental attack on Kowalski, just to see, but an attack would open himself up as well and he doesn’t want to let out his own gift right away. He’s never been good at mental warfare anyway.

And Francesca is sitting at this table. She’s clearly friendly with the liar boy, if not friends. Either she knows what the liar boy’s secrets are, and if she did, she wouldn’t appreciate him pushing for them now, or she doesn’t and she is in as much danger as the rest. If he is silent now, he can try to pin her down on it later. If she knows, he can try to find out what it is to make a proper threat assessment; if she doesn’t, he can try to soften the blow to her when he rips the lie away. Aldon hates lies, and he _will_ find out the truth behind this one. Later.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Aldon replies casually, forcing himself to relax and letting another smile come across his face. “You’re a Healer, right?”

“That’s right,” Potter says with an easy grin of his own. “I’m looking forward to the matches.”

Aldon looks behind him, up at his friends, who are giving him a look of barely hidden caution and curiosity. They know him too well—they saw him tense, and now they are seeing him force himself to calm. “Come on, Toby, Saoirse—why are you still standing? They’ve invited us now, so let’s join them for dinner.”

If he is honest with himself later, he is only half-paying attention to the conversation over dinner. They touch on Wizarding British politics, nothing he doesn’t already know, and he says only that he’s an undocumented halfblood from Manchester, much like Saoirse’s friend Sean from Galway. No one asks about his appearance, much to his relief, so he guesses that no one at this table knows the British nobility enough to see his father in him. He prefers that.

Instead, he quite rudely preoccupies himself with Francesca on his right for most of the evening. She’s from San Francisco, a newblood, but her family comes from Hong Kong. She’s best friends with John Kowalski, and clearly that friendship is exceedingly important to her, so Aldon makes a note to stay on Kowalski’s good side. She loves magical dance, and Disney movies, and tea, and romance novels, and the more he prods, the more flattered she seems to be. He’s just about decided that he’s going to make his best efforts to have one of the famed Triwizard Tournament whirlwind romances with her, the very concept of which he has hitherto scorned, when no person other than Nealan Queenscove shows up at his table.

“Blake!” his archrival sings, slapping one hand on his shoulder. “Didn’t get a chance to say hello earlier. How are you? _Félicitations_ on making it through the Ilvermorny Ceremonies, no surprises, though I heard from my sister that you were sick as a dog afterwards.”

Aldon looks up to see the biggest shit-eating grin on Queenscove’s face, and he remembers that Jessa Queenscove, a third-year, is in Duelling Club with him at Ilvermorny. “That’s right,” he starts, then he sees Queenscove’s eyes slide over to Francesca, who has lit up to see him.

“Is Blake bothering you, Francesca?” he asks, the grin not budging one iota as he glances back down at Aldon. “He’s a terror on the duelling circuit, though I’ve beat him _three_ times.”

“And didn’t make the AIM team,” Aldon retorts, scrambling for a response. He was planning on finding Queenscove for the express purpose of mocking him, he really was, but in the moment all his carefully planned quips seem rather childish. And Francesca is looking at Queenscove with a smile, and he realizes that they’re friends. God _damn_ it.

Queenscove’s expression tells him that Queenscove knows perfectly well what just went through his head.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Francesca is insisting, sounding a little embarrassed. “Aldon’s been, um, very nice.”

“Nice, eh?” Queenscove wiggles his eyebrows a little, then he looks over at Aldon. “You have to understand—my older brother Will is practically engaged to her older sister, so Francesca’s family. Do anything weird, and the might of Clans Queenscove and Kowalski will come crashing down on you.”

“That’s a vague threat if I’ve ever heard one,” Aldon says, trying to sound disgusted instead of unnerved. “I could take you on.”

“You couldn’t last year.” Queenscove grins again. “And John there took me out at the AIM Trials, so by the transitive property of duelling victories—”

“There is no transitive property of duelling victories!”

Francesca giggles, the sound musical to his ears, and he turns back to her with an embarrassed smile. “Don’t worry about this, sweetheart. Queenscove is just taking the opportunity to mock me, because he can.”

“There are just so few opportunities for me to do it,” Queenscove sighs airily. “I have to take them where they come. But seriously, Blake, hurt her and we’ll hurt you. I wasn’t joking about that part.”

Aldon shakes his head, but he’s smiling. He does understand, because he would do the same if someone hurt Toby or Saoirse, too. Relationships are important, and he understands being protective. “Not in the plans—though, I was hoping to dance, later?”

He looks back at Francesca for the latter, and is gratified to see her smile. “I suppose—well, can you do magical dance at all? In the air?”

“A bit.” Aldon takes her hand, feeling more grateful than ever that Saoirse had shown him the air-hardening rune last year and that he had tried it out in duelling a few times. It was a handy trick to have in his back pocket. “Nothing too fancy, but I’ll keep up.”

She smiles again, and she lets him keep her hand. Fortunately, it turns out she likes the crème brulée dessert, so Aldon doesn’t need to awkwardly eat with his left hand while holding hers. He simply slides his dessert over to her and learns that she has a whole second stomach for sweets.

Even Toby’s grumbling about how he has the most embarrassing best friend in possible existence doesn’t deflate him. Toby’s complained about Aldon being embarrassing for years, and Aldon has enough self-assurance and confidence that he just doesn’t care.

As stunned as he might be by Francesca, though, he doesn’t forget the liar boy.

He’s sitting in the much cooler and quieter lounge, hours of dancing later, before he asks. It’s dark out now, and his suit jacket is draped over Francesca’s shoulders, and she’s curled up beside him. In the last few hours, he’s learned that she’s a runic paperwitch, which she didn’t seem to want to talk about, and that she is very, very good at magical dance. He’s learned that she has few close friends, only John when she gets down to it, but she’s friendly with many others, including the liar who calls himself Harry Potter.

He hopes that she knows nothing about the liar boy. It’s easier for him if she doesn’t, because then she’s just one more possible victim in his deception, and Aldon prefers not to see her as a collaborator.

“Potter,” he says, thoughtful, wondering just how to go about asking questions. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him before, and most of the British students abroad kind of know of each other, even if we’ve never met. Isn’t he part of your BSA?”

“No, not that I know.” Francesca frowns. She is much more relaxed around him, now, and she doesn’t stutter half as much. “He’s in theatre and Healing Association, I think. Why do you ask?”

Aldon shrugs. She’s being honest, there. “I was just curious—most British join the BSA, it’s just a bit odd that he hasn’t.”

There’s a long pause, and Aldon waits. Her hand is warm, and he pulls it into his lap, drawing little circles on the back of it. Her frown hasn’t disappeared, but she’s chewing on her bottom lip.

“I think he’s trying not to be noticed by people from Britain,” she says finally, her voice dropping. “He’s recognizable, or something like that. I don’t—I’m not really one to ask things like that, Aldon. I mean—we all have things we want to keep private, right? If he wants me to know, then he’ll tell me. It’s not—I don’t really care, if that makes sense?”

She’s being honest, and her innocent trust is charming, even sweet. For Aldon, that kind of trust is a luxury; he always wants to know _more_ about the people around him, because the more he knows, the less they can surprise him. It isn’t that he _doesn’t_ trust—it’s that trust is something earned from him, not a default given. And he doesn’t trust someone who’s lying about something as basic as his _face_ and his _name_.

Recognizable, though. In Wizarding Britain? Aldon knows what that means, his past tutoring in the noble class and their etiquette finally paying off. The Potters hold House Peverell, and their _daughter_ , _Harriett_ Potter, is supposed to attend AIM. The liar boy is about the right age, too.

The beginning of a logical explanation form in his mind, but it doesn’t make sense with his gut, or with his gift.

“Has he…” he ventures slowly. “Has Potter always gone by that name? _Harry_ Potter, I mean. And he’s always been… him, I suppose?”

Francesca gives him a very odd look. It is an odd question, Aldon grants.

“Yes,” she replies, puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean, but he’s always gone by Harry and he’s always been himself. I don’t—I mean—why are you asking?”

She sounds upset, and she’s starting to pull away from him, so Aldon is hasty to reply. He grips her hand, plasters a bright smile on his face. “It’s not important, sweetheart. Don’t worry about it. You said it’s your first time in Scotland, and you’re going out tomorrow to see the castle, right? Let me take you. I want to take you out.”

She stops, looking up at him, and there’s a moment where she just looks at him, her dark eyes wide and almost surprised. Then, she smiles, and her nose crinkles just a touch. “Like—a date?”

Aldon grins back, tapping her on her nose. “I thought I made that clear. Yes, a date.”

He drops Francesca back off at her room shortly after midnight, feeling very grateful that the entire North American League is staying in the same cheap, three-star hotel in Edinburgh. By the time he reaches his own room, shared with Toby, his friend is already there, lounging on one of the double beds and watching the telly.

“What’s on?” Aldon asks, kicking off his shoes and finding a hangar to pull off his suit jacket. He strips off his tie, his shirt and trousers, and digs in his suitcase for a t-shirt and shorts.

“Nothing good,” Toby replies, reaching for the remote to flick off the telly. “I’m not sure why I’m surprised. There’s never anything good on at midnight on a Wednesday. What was that about at dinner, Al? I know you—we’ve been friends for years. You picked something up, and you didn’t like it. And what about Francesca?”

“She’s stunning, isn’t she?” Aldon grins. “And she’s _so_ sweet, and when she dances—”

Toby groans. “Spare me your lovesick descriptions. Dinner. What happened at dinner?”

Aldon sighs, shaking his head, feeling the magic of the later part of the evening slip away as he falls onto his own bed. “Harry Potter is a liar. It’s not his real face, and it’s not his real name, and what gets me is that he _knows_ it, he _knows_ he’s lying and he’s doing it anyway with a smile. Francesca doesn’t know anything, by the way—I asked her, she said he’s always gone by that name, seemed puzzled and then upset that I asked.”

“He’s British, but I never met him or saw him at any BSA events.” Toby rolls over on the bed, onto his back. “I don’t remember him being on the AIM membership lists, either. Odd.”

“Francesca says that she thinks he’s worried about being recognized.” Aldon hesitates, then he sighs again. Toby is his best friend, and he’s always told Toby everything. They’ve gotten drunk too many times together over too many years to have much by way of secrets. “That means he’s probable nobility, which makes a lot of sense with what Granger was telling us at JFK this morning but _doesn’t_ make a lot of sense with what I know about the nobility. There _is_ a noble family called the Potters, but…”

“But?”

Aldon shakes his head. “You’re going to think I’ve gone daft. The Potters are Light faction, and their heiress is a halfblood, about the right age, named _Harriett_ Potter. She’s supposed to be at school in America. Their _heiress_ , Toby. Harriett Potter is a girl.”

Toby blinks, then he tilts his head, thinking it through. “Er, Al, you said he’s lying about his face and his name. And he matches the description of a halfblood _girl_ about the same age with almost the same name. Don’t you think there’s an obvious solution, here?”

“That the Harry Potter we met is setting me off because he’s really _Harriett_ Potter and a girl?”

“Yeah.” Toby throws him a worried look. “I mean, think about it. You’re Harriett Potter, a girl, but you really feel like Harry Potter, a boy. You go abroad, and it’s the first time you can shed the identity prescribed to you to live life as the boy you feel like you are. So, you put on a glamour spell, you change your name. Doesn’t that solve the lying issue?”

“No. No, it really doesn’t.” Aldon blows out a frustrated breath. “Because my gift doesn’t react to the _spell_ , it reacts to deception. And people who are trans _aren’t lying_ , Toby—they _are_ the gender they identify themselves as, so it’s the same thing as makeup spells. The glamour just lets them be their real selves so if it was as easy as Harry Potter being trans, then he wouldn’t trigger my gift at all. No, it’s something else, and I _want to know what it is_.”

Toby eyes him for a moment. He knows Aldon too well, and he knows the stubborn look coming across Aldon’s face, too. “And Francesca?”

“What about her?”

“Are you using her for information, or do you really like her? Because,” Toby pauses, thinking it over. “Whatever your intentions are, it’s going to look like the former if you push too hard.”

“I know.” Aldon’s voice is quiet. “I’ll have to be careful about it—I do like her, a lot, and I’d like to get the information _without_ trashing my chances with her.”

Toby thinks for a moment, then he smiles. “Good luck. I’m actually kind of glad to see you crushing on someone. You were always so skeptical about dating—it can be great, you know. Though it’s funny to see that you’re apparently quite a lot like your mum when it comes to falling in love.”

So says the one that has been dating on and off since fifth year. Aldon rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. He’s been thinking the same thing half through the night. “Better like my mum than my sperm donor. If I ever abandon anyone after knocking them up, just kill me, Toby. I don’t want to be that person.”

* * *

Edinburgh Castle is beautiful, but Aldon has to admit that he doesn’t spend much time looking around the famed historical landmark. He’s too preoccupied watching Francesca flit about the castle, a dreamy look on her face as she stares in wonder. She loves everything about the castle: its prominent position on a rocky hill overlooking the City of Edinburgh, the sheer walls and ramparts, the ancient buildings and squares steeped in history. She reads every last one of the little informational plaques littered across the grounds, from the little one on St Margaret’s Chapel telling them that it was the only building spared when Robert the Bruce captured the castle in 1314, to the one by the tiny fountain called the Witches’ Well, where hundreds of women were burnt at the stake.

Aldon, for his part, looks around and thinks about his own heritage, about the future that Aunt Lina has prepared him to fight for, if he wants it. He’s never been to Rosier Place, but he’s sure it looks nothing like the majesty around him. To begin, while he knows the Rosiers are wealthy, they’re Book of Copper, which means they were ennobled well after the time when these kinds of fortresses were built. Rosier Place is more likely a large mansion house, not a castle, built with large windows, a wide drive for carriages, and comfort rather than protection.

It’s not the first time he’s wondered about his supposed birthright. When he was a child, he thought about it endlessly—what would it have been like, to grow up as the recognized Heir to House Rosier? What would it have been like, to be wealthy, to have all the etiquette tutors and status that his heritage was supposed to offer him? What would it have been like, to be Aldon _Rosier_ rather than Aldon Blake?

He would never call his upbringing impoverished, but it is true that his mum had to keep a strict eye on their budget. They’ve lived in the same, slightly run-down townhouse in the same blue-collar neighbourhood his entire life, and while they’ve never strictly needed to shop in second-hand stores, neither have they ever declined second-hand clothing, books, or anything else Aldon might have needed. A penny saved is a penny earned, or at least it’s a penny that he and Mum can spend on something fun like ice cream, or a movie, or the rare ticket to a Man U game.

As Aldon Rosier, they wouldn’t have had to worry about money. He would have had everything at his fingertips—anything they wanted, they could have had. As a child, he was so, so jealous of the imaginary person he should have been.

As an adult, he mostly burns with fury about it all. This is the world that he _should_ have inherited, and he doesn’t have it, because he isn’t _pure_.

“Can we go to the gift shop?” Francesca asks, returning with a bright, excited look in her eyes.

“Sure.” Aldon smiles back. He’s been done in this room, the old armoury, for at least the last ten minutes, while Francesca examined the tapestries so closely that he wonders if she now has them memorized. “If you’re done here.”

“Then—oh, are you hungry?” A look of guilt flashes over her face as she checks her watch. “I’m sorry, it’s almost two, and we didn’t get lunch…”

“It’s fine,” Aldon reassures her, even if he’s been starving for the past hour. His core rumbles in mild displeasure at the white lie, and he tells it to shut up. He had, as a fifth-year, tried a period of _radical honesty_ , but after being jumped three times in a month by other students in dark corridors for it, he has come to appreciate that some lies are better for everyone involved. “Gift shop, then a late lunch, how is that?”

“Yeah.” Francesca smiles, takes Aldon’s hand, and tugs him towards the gift shop.

It’s past three by the time they find a place for lunch, Francesca weighed down by a new scarf in a tartan pattern, a stuffed bear wearing kilt, and a dozen keychains for her parents and friends. The food is decent, but overpriced since they are in the heart of the tourist district, and Aldon doesn’t ask a single question about Harry Potter, or AIM, or the Tournament. Instead, he just listens, lets Francesca direct the conversation where she pleases.

They talk about food, mostly—a logical place to start, since they’re sitting and eating. San Francisco is a big, international city with a burgeoning No-Maj tech industry, and Francesca, it seems, has eaten everything. But then again, Aldon has grown up in Manchester, a growing international city of its own, and he’s eaten his own wide array of food. They debate for an hour over the proper way to eat a slice of pizza (with their hands, clearly), the function of pasta (as a vehicle for sauce, obviously), and whether tortellini are really just weird Chinese dumplings (definitely not, Chinese dumplings taste better). He learns that Francesca loves dessert, but surprisingly not chocolate—she says it’s too sweet, and she much prefers vanilla over chocolate.

From there, the conversation wanders. They talk about music—Aldon is all punk rock, but Francesca likes classical, swing and soundtracks, and then it turns to movies. Ilvermorny is so isolated, in the Appalachians, that the students really can’t go anywhere during term, and Aldon has to catch up on all his favourite shows and No-Maj culture over the holidays. They’ve both been following Star Trek for a while, though Aldon tends to just watch it when it’s on while Francesca follows it near religiously, but he knows enough to argue about the merits of _Deep Space Nine_ against _The Next Generation_ with her. He learns, from that conversation, that Francesca’s parents both work in No-Maj engineering, her father in materials engineering and her mother in computer engineering, and that she herself intends on attending No-Maj college after AIM for engineering. As far as Francesca is concerned, computers are the way of the future, and mages will need to catch up or be left behind.

She’s not wrong, Aldon admits, and he wishes he had one. He’d love to experiment with the interplay between magic and No-Maj technology, but computers are expensive, and while Mum has been eyeing one for a while, she just can’t justify the cost of it yet. Francesca looks stunned, then briefly horrified, then promises that she’ll build him a computer out of some spare parts she has at home, because a computer is something that he simply _has_ to have, and then she falls all over herself apologizing because really, she shouldn’t be saying this to someone she’s just met. Aldon laughs, and he laughs, and he tells her it’s fine, and by the time they’re back in the hotel he’s secured himself a second date.

The next day, Francesca looks upset when he meets her in the hotel lobby.

“What’s up?” he asks, reaching for her hand. They had spent enough of yesterday hand in hand, walking all over the old city, that he knows she’ll let him take it.

“Nothing,” she lies, trying to cover it with a tiny smile. “It’s nothing. Let’s just—let’s go. Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park!”

He frowns at her. “It’s not nothing,” he says, leaning down a little to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head furiously. “Just—nothing.”

Aldon thinks for a minute, wondering how much about himself he should tell her. His gift itself is not a secret—everyone at Ilvermorny knows of it, and he really does mean everyone. Aldon’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut when he picks out a lie, and there was the period of radical honesty too. Revealing his gift also has no impact on the Tournament, for Ilvermorny, because he isn’t their weapon—Saoirse is. But revealing it now could be an interesting prod.

“You can’t lie to me, Francesca,” he says, with a gentle smile. “I have the Truth-Speaker gift, so lies hurt my core. Why don’t we talk about it? Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park can wait for us—and I’ll even Apparate us there, to save time.”

She looks surprised, then alarmed, then she starts to shake and tries to pull her hand away. “I don’t—what does that mean? What do you _know_ _?!_ ”

“Not much.” Aldon grips her hand, turning her to look at him directly. “Hey. Hey, calm down. Truth Speaker gifts aren’t like Natural Legilimency or anything, not like what John has. I only know when people are lying to me, not anything else. So I know you’re upset, and I know that your _nothing_ is a lie, but I don’t know why. I’d like to know why.”

She stops struggling. “Are you just doing this to find out more about AIM and our strategy?”

“This?”

She waves her hand in a little circle, panicked and miserable. “Taking—taking me out on a date. Flirting with me. Making me—making me feel special.”

Aldon tilts his head. “Have I asked you a _single_ thing about the AIM team strategy?”

“No, but—” she pauses, and there’s something she isn’t saying, but Aldon decides to leave it alone. It probably has to do with AIM team strategy anyway. “No.”

“Have I ever pushed you on AIM or anything else to make you feel uncomfortable?”

“Just—just on Harry. But he’s a Healer, and he has nothing to do with team strategy, and—”

“And?”

“And John says it was weird that you asked. Everything else was fine, just—just that.”

Aldon sighs. He doesn’t like doing this, but its clear as day that whatever the liar boy is hiding, Francesca has no idea. “I asked because—well. When he introduced himself to me, when he said his name was Harry Potter, he was lying.”

She blinks once, then twice. “I don’t—I don’t understand. Harry’s always been Harry. I don’t—“

“I don’t understand either,” Aldon cuts her off. “But if he’s always been Harry, and you haven’t picked up a big change, then maybe it has nothing to do with the Tournament, or anything else. People can lie for all reasons, I just—I use my gift to try to keep my friends and family safe. That’s all. Do you want to go to the park, now?”

She’s thinking, a worried frown on her face. “So—so, um, are you, um—these dates—”

“I’m taking you on these dates because I _like_ you, Francesca.” Aldon keeps his voice soft, but firm. “I’m the Captain of Ilvermorny Duelling—I don’t need to resort to tricks to lead Ilvermorny to a victory. Ask Neal Queenscove about me, if you want. We’re not even in the same pools, so let’s just deal with Tournament things when we need to. Let’s just go to the park, the way we planned, and have some fun.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, then looks up and giggles a little. “You… like me?”

“I said it, and it’s true.” Aldon smiles, squeezing her hand. “The Tournament is famous for whirlwind romances, you know. It’s _traditional_.”

“Yeah. Neal’s parents met in the Tournament, and I yelled at John this morning about Gerry, too.” Francesca smiles back, her mood lightening. “And Neal is trying to get together with Kel’s friend from Mahoutokoro. So—so…”

“So we’ll go have fun,” Aldon finishes, tugging her outside. “Come on.”

The lookout at Arthur’s Seat, with its grand panoramic view of the city of Edinburgh, is a solid hour’s hike uphill. The sight, however, is beautiful, and Aldon can’t help but cast a Notice-Me-Not charm for the express purpose of hiding them from the other tourists so that he can lean down and capture Francesca’s lips in a kiss. One kiss leads to two, leads to three, and that’s when he pulls away because he wants enough more that a Notice-Me-Not Charm in a public place is just not going to cut it. He’s not Toby, who’s been caught snogging more than one girl in the Wampus common room, while he and Saoirse criticize his technique—anything more than a few kisses, and he’d rather be behind a shut door, thank you. Some things are better kept private.

They do have to be back early because Aldon has a team meeting, so it’s with some regret that he leaves her at her room in the hotel a few hours later. When he resurfaces from arguing about how El Colegio Castellano de Magia has literally never managed to put together a team worth worrying about, with Toby taking the lead on arguing why they should prepare anyway, he isn’t entirely surprised to see John Kowalski waiting for him.

“Truth-Speaker,” the boy says, with a friendly, if edged, smile. “Can we talk?”

“This counts as talking.” Aldon leans back against the wall, assessing his options. Narrow hallway, a decent place for a fight if there is one, partially because since Aldon is small he’s hampered less than John would be, and partially because Aldon’s used to scrapping in hallways. He’s also at the advantage here because Toby and Saoirse are beside him, and a few of the other Ilvermorny team members are hovering in the corridor, throwing John a curious glance.

“Privately, I mean?”

Aldon raises an eyebrow.

John sighs. “I’m not about to jump you. I really do just want to talk.”

He’s speaking truth, so Aldon turns to his teammates. “It’s fine. You can all go ahead, I’ll meet you later.”

Most of his teammates nod and disappear, though Toby hesitates. “I’ll see you back in our room in half an hour,” he says, glancing at John in a clear warning. “If not, I’m getting everyone and looking for you.”

“I’m sure you won’t need to.” Aldon smiles, his own expression a little edged, then he tilts his head towards the board room. “After you, John.”

They don’t sit down, in the board room. Instead, John perches on the edge of the table, while Aldon leans back against the shut door, waiting.

John has called him out, so John should start.

“Harry Potter,” John says, his voice low and serious.

“Harry Potter is a liar,” Aldon replies.

“He is, but his lies don’t have anything to do with the Tournament.” John’s expression is stern, and he’s telling the truth. “I know what he’s hiding, and it’s—it’s something that’s been going on since his first year, since before he even knew about the Tournament. It has nothing to do with anything, so I’m asking you not to look into it.”

“Your friend is hiding his _name_ and his _face_.” Aldon straightens, takes a step forward. “I can’t think of a lot of innocuous reasons for that. Especially when you include the fact that I only read deception; if it were something like being trans, or hiding scarring, or a change of name, it wouldn’t read as a lie to me. He’s lying about who he _is_ , and I need to know if that’s a danger to me or my team. Or even to Francesca, who doesn’t seem to know anything about it.”

Anger flashes over John’s face. “You’ve known Chess for all of three days; I’m basically her brother. I would _never_ let anything happen to her. I’m telling you, Aldon, I know the secret. I’m not going to say it’s an innocuous secret, but it has nothing to do with you, or us, or with this Tournament. It’s his personal business, and the only person he’s hurting is himself. Leave it alone, man.”

John believes what he’s saying. Aldon doesn’t. From what John is saying, from what Francesca has said, clearly Harry Potter is some sort of long-term impostor, and he doesn’t know if John has really thought through the consequences of a long-term impostor situation. Aldon doesn’t know if even he can grasp the consequences of a long-term imposter situation just yet.

He doesn’t get it. What could possibly be worth such a long term lie? What was Potter getting out of lying that he wouldn’t get otherwise? Coming from Britain, Potter wouldn’t even know what he was getting into at AIM for long-term plotting purposes. Unless, maybe…

He’s looking to emigrate from Britain to Wizarding America and can’t do it through normal channels? Werewolf, dhampir, shifter or part-creature, potentially, but why? Or, maybe it is some larger, very personal reason—he wouldn’t have entered into this without something at stake, and judging from John’s comment, _the only person he’s hurting is himself_ , maybe it’s the last that’s the most accurate.

Aldon relaxes, a bit. He doesn’t care about grand personal reasons so much as he cares about safety, and if John thinks it’s fine and it is a long-term situation, then it likely isn’t a _dangerous_ secret, or at least not imminently so. He can leave it alone for the moment. The Tournament is only a few months long, and he can always keep a close eye on the boy in the meantime.

It doesn’t look like he has much choice anyway. He _wants_ to rip away the mask, to find out what Harry Potter is hiding, but he won’t get any closer to finding out what it is by fighting John. John looks prepared to duel him over it, and there’s nothing to be gained by fighting it in the here and now. He just doesn’t know enough, yet.

“All right,” Aldon says easily, leaning back against the door, “since you’ve asked so nicely. Let’s talk about something else. You argued with Francesca this morning. Over me.”

John’s jaw tightens. “I was warning her.”

“I _like_ her, John.” Aldon keeps his voice pleasant, but there’s a steely edge to it anyway. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I like to keep her from getting hurt, where I can.” John crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re handsome, a seventh-year, and the Ilvermorny Duelling Captain to boot. Tell me you don’t have a lineup of girls at Ilvermorny waiting for you.”

Aldon doesn’t. The whole Truth-Speaking thing but a kibosh on that, and then there was the radical honesty phase. He laughs, his eyebrows moving upwards in amusement. “I really don’t. You can ask anyone on my team to confirm. Though, I’m glad to hear that you think I’m handsome.”

“Francesca does, too.” John flashes a grin, though it’s not a nice one. “Hurt her and I’ll hurt you.”

“Queenscove already gave me this lecture, John.” Aldon shakes his head, his smile disappearing. “I just don’t appreciate you putting completely unwarranted ideas about how I’m using her into her head. Ilvermorny doesn’t need to rely on such underhanded methods to win against you—we can win this Tournament on our own.”

They glare at each other a moment, then John laughs, and the sound rings as genuine in Aldon’s core. “I guess we’ll see you in the finals, then.”

“Thrash Hogwarts for us tomorrow.” Aldon smiles, back at ease. He thinks he has enough of a fix on John now—while John might never be on his side, neither will he throw any more wrenches into the gears with Francesca. And Aldon can find out more about the liar calling himself Harry Potter later.

* * *

The next day, Ilvermorny is on the field at nine in the morning and they clean out El Colegio Castellano de Magia in under thirty minutes. It’s an absolute horror for the Spanish team, but on Lake they’re on one of Ilvermorny’s strongest terrains—anything set out in nature, and Saoirse’s traditional magic is blasting in full force. Most of their time is spent just going around the lake, jogging fueled by speed spells with Saoirse’s magic hiding them, and it takes them only ten minutes to find two members of the Spanish team and for Aldon and Chris to eliminate them from play. Then, while Aldon toys around with the last Spanish teammate, Saoirse finds the keystone and destroys it. A clean five-nothing win, and Ilvermorny is already the team to beat.

AIM is still in on the field when Aldon comes out, against Hogwarts, and he settles down in the lounge to watch. It’s only a few minutes before he realizes that AIM is doing well—very well. They’ve already taken out two of Hogwarts’ players, and Aldon hopes that AIM toyed with them as much as Aldon would have.

It is one of the biggest tragedies of the Triwizard Tournament format. Aldon would have given much for Ilvermorny to share a pool with the famed Hogwarts School. There would have been just so much poetic justice for _Aldon Blake_ , a halfblood with an obvious visual connection to a Dark, SOW Party family, shoving one of Hogwarts’ precious, pureblood champions into the dirt. He would have taken his time to humiliate Hogwarts, enjoyed it for longer than a standard Duelling match, before he finally put the poor player out of their misery. It would have been very unlike his match with the Spaniards, in which Aldon had been all business.

But instead, he has to hope that Hogwarts makes their way out of the pools onto the elimination tree for another shot at them, and it’s clear from the AIM game that Hogwarts is not winning this match.

On screen, John has finally found the final Hogwarts player, the Dark Society darling Arcturus Rigel Black, more commonly known as Rigel Black, and suddenly Aldon straightens.

“Rigel Black,” he hears John say on the screen, and he can’t hear anything else over the wild roaring in his ears. Arcturus Rigel Black looks too much like the liar calling himself Harry Potter. Far, far too much like him.

They aren’t related. He knows it from years of tutoring, that the Black and Potter families aren’t closely related at all, though their families are reportedly very close. Harriett Potter and Arcturus Rigel Black shouldn’t be more than about third cousins, even if they’ve grown up childhood friends. They shouldn’t look like twins, and yet they do, and the Harry Potter he has met is a liar. A _long-term_ liar, and an impostor.

He feels like he has all the pieces, but he can’t put them together. There’s something there, just on the edge of his thoughts, and it’s so close that he can almost _taste_ it. But it’s not _coming_ , and the feeling is so frustrating that he shuts his eyes, grits his teeth, searching for it.

And there’s a gasp through the room, and Aldon’s eyes spring open. On the screen, one of the AIM players fallen, and it takes a second for Aldon to remember. There’s only one Hogwarts player left on the field, Rigel Black, and John has him occupied. It can’t be Black.

“Cheating,” Aldon hears someone in the room muttering, then a louder voice. “Hogwarts is _cheating!_ ”

Two AIM Healers Portkey onto the terrain. Whatever the injury is, it’s bad, because Potter’s face on the screen, his arms signalling his player out, is terrified and grim. He grabs the other Healer and his player, and they’re out, and Aldon is standing. The lounge is thick with angry comments and noise, but he can’t turn away from the screen. They aren’t showing their player anymore, but Hogwarts is still alive, Black battling it out with Kowalski for another few, interminable minutes-

And the keystone explodes. A five-one win that should have been a five-nothing rout, and Aldon is frozen in shock.

If he saw Arcturus Rigel Black in person, he wonders if he would set off his gift just as much as Harry Potter does.

They look too similar, too much like twins instead of like distant cousins.

The Harry Potter he has met is not Harry Potter. The Harry Potter he has met wears a glamour hiding his true face.

The Black and Potter families are close. Just how close are they? Just how close are _Arcturus Rigel Black_ and _Harriett Potter?_

Because _Harriett Potter_ , a halfblood, can’t go to Hogwarts. And _Arcturus Rigel Black_ , a pureblood, can. And when they’ve grown up in Britain, when Britain is what they know, it makes quite a lot more sense that the reason for the ruse is _there, in Britain_ , and not in America at all.

He suddenly has a wild, insane theory that Harry Potter is _Arcturus Rigel Black_. One of them is here, and one of them is there, and Aldon might be insane but he also has the sharp conviction that he’s _right_. It fits. It fits perfectly, like a glove.

Aldon hates it.

* * *

AIM borrows the entire Ilvermorny stock of Blood Replenishers for their injured player, and they get the score reversed. Aldon expects no less from Hermione Granger, already climbing the ranks of the BIA, and the entire AIM team looks shell-shocked when they finally come out. Francesca makes a beeline for him, and he wraps her in a warm hug—he can see that she’s stressed, and she’s tired, and she’s overwhelmed, and he shoots John a glare and ushers her off somewhere quiet so that she can just cry into his sweatshirt for a little while.

He spends that time thinking. He has no idea what would compel Harriett Potter and Arcturus Rigel Black to switch places for school. He can’t think of anything at Hogwarts that would be worth the risk. It’s not that Hogwarts is a bad school—to the contrary, it probably provides the best general education of all wand-using schools. The remainder of the schools tend to support their students specializing into various Mastery programs rather early, so he supposes it could be an ideal education for someone who wanted to be a generalist. But most schools also start their students in generalist programs, and provide a solid general education as well as the Mastery, so that sounds rather weak to his ears.

He can’t get over his anger at her—mostly her, because Arcturus Rigel Black can school wherever he damn well wants to school, and he thinks that Arcturus was probably just a close, easy-going friend, who didn’t really care whether he went to Hogwarts or not. Black benefits in his own way from the switch, whether he knew it before or not; Black is in Healing, and AIM has one of the best Healing programs in the world.

Aldon is angry at Harriett Potter, because she’s a halfblood. She is a halfblood, the same as him, except that Harriett Potter, a Book of Gold heiress as well as a halfblood, has decided that the laws that every other halfblood has to obey don’t bloody well apply to her. More than that, he knows enough Wizarding British politics to know that she’s gone and ingratiated herself into the SOW Party, becoming best friends with the _Malfoys_ and the _Parkinsons_ , families that have long supported the blood discrimination laws.

Those laws kicked every newblood and halfblood out of Britain. Except for her, because she’s decided, with her friend’s help, that they shouldn’t apply to her. Those laws are a part of what made his sperm donor abandon his Mum, they are what kept Aldon from his birthright, they have caused _so much suffering_ , and there she is, supporting it by standing up as a proud example of pureblood power.

She’s a blood traitor. She’s a blood traitor as much as any pureblood caught mingling with newbloods and halfbloods is supposed to be a blood traitor, and Aldon hates her. He doesn’t need to meet her to know that he hates her. He wants to face her on the field, pummel _her_ into the dust, make her pay for the injustices that he’s lived for the past eighteen years. He doesn't even know if Hogwarts will make it through to eliminations, but a part of him wants them to, just so that he can have the pleasure of standing in front of her, the bastard son of Lord Evan Rosier, and beating her in front of all of Wizarding Britain.

There isn’t much else he can do. Aldon Blake is a goddamn fucking nobody in Wizarding Britain, no matter who his sperm donor is. No one would believe him anyway, not compared to the Dark Society darling that is Rigel Black. Being a Truth-Speaker means nothing in Wizarding Britain, and he just another halfblood trained abroad. If they pay attention to him at all, it would more likely be to charge him with slander and defamation than anything else. Aldon can go and get confirmation that _Rigel Black_ is really Harriett Potter if he wants, but no one will believe him.

He’s furious. He’s furious, and he burns with rage, and there is _nothing_ he can do about it.

That night, the professors call them all down to the lounge, brief them on what happened, and invite them all to consider withdrawing. Aldon won’t withdraw, not over this—there is just too much at stake. Saoirse and Toby are behind him, as are more than half of their teammates, so Ilvermorny stays in.

The rules are tighter, the second week. They’re allowed to go out, but the curfews are strict, and they aren’t allowed to go alone. Bizarrely, that works well for him personally—he and Francesca share a hotel, and while most of their mornings are spent in strategy meetings or homework, they can go out by themselves in the afternoons. They hit the National Museum of Scotland one afternoon, the Scott Monument another day, and a few days they even stay in, just cuddling and talking in the lounge. She’s a snugglebug, quick to reach for physical affection, and Aldon finds that he doesn’t mind at all. He tells her more about himself—about growing up in a single-parent household in Manchester, about his early years in school, about how he loves football more than any magical sport. He tells her about Aunt Lina, his terrifying aunt that’s always managed to scrounge up the fees for anything he really wanted or needed that wasn’t covered by Mum’s budget, and Master Moody, his insane and insanely competent duelling coach. He even mentions being a bastard, talks about how his sperm donor left him and his mother because they weren’t pureblooded _._ And in return, she talks about her early years in San Francisco, about hanging out in a corner of her dad’s lab at Stanford watching her dad and his colleagues experiment with new materials, about how her mom always brought home the newest computers on the market for her to play with, about summer engineering camp with a dozen boys who _always_ thought they were better than her at coding. She even tells him about the hell that is AIM for her, about not having a wand and being Exceptional and being accommodated in her classes for paper magic alone, and Aldon thinks he’s falling more in love with her as every day passes.

It’s a week before the next matches. A week, and it’s Ilvermorny on the field first on Saturday, standing off against Schwarzenstein on the Rock terrain. Francesca has told him that she and John have bets, on whose new boyfriend can beat the other’s, and Aldon is already resolved to win that bet for her.

The Rock terrain is open, without any cover at all, and his team spots the Schwarzenstein team before the match signal even starts. As soon as it does, Ilvermorny is on the offensive—Aldon and Chris are in the forefront while Saoirse draws back to their keystone, humming a protective phrase in Gaelic.

Gerhardt Riemann is a tough dueller, but he’s a standard one. There are no tricks with him—he’s just strong, and fast, with a deep core to match. Aldon has him outmatched the second he starts throwing runes into the mix, and Aldon hasn’t gained his reputation for being the fastest dueller on the circuit for nothing. It takes him seven minutes on the Rock terrain to take Gerhardt out, courtesy of a non-verbal Stunning Spell, and then he turns to help Chris with his opponent.

Chris is holding his own, but with Aldon now free, they finish the second Schwarzenstein player off before she even realizes that her teammate is down. From there, it’s tricky—the final Schwarzenstein player is looking to end the game before Ilvermorny can take out her keystone, to decrease the points against her team, but Ilvermorny wants her standing for a five-nothing win. It’s a grapple on the other end, Aldon trying to keep her occupied so Chris can blow the keystone, but she _knows_ that Aldon doesn’t want to eliminate her from play, so she ignores him in favour of protecting her keystone.

In the end, it’s almost a mistake—the spells that he and Chris are casting cross wires, and two minor curses that should have caused inconvenience only hit their opponent at the same time and knock her out. They glance at each other, wincing, and Ilvermorny walks with a three-nothing win.

They go out for dinner that night at a local pub, just him and Francesca and John and Gerhardt, and no one glows more than Francesca who waves the twenty quid that she won off John and uses it to pay for both her dinner and Aldon’s. The double date works wonders—John even seems to like him at the end, and Aldon hasn’t mentioned anything about Harry Potter, or Arcturus Rigel Black, or AIM’s possible team strategies.

Aldon knows by now that AIM has something new up its sleeve, and quite precisely up _John’s_ sleeve. John is a terror already, his Natural Legilimency giving him an edge, but he also has a new channelling method. _That_ is obviously Francesca’s brainchild, and Aldon would put money on it being somehow tech-related. He _desperately_ wants to ask more about it, because he almost has a Mastery in Magical Theory and he’s long been fascinated by the interplay of magic and No-Maj technology, but he can’t. He can’t, because if they both end up in eliminations, and both AIM and Ilvermorny usually do, he doesn’t want there to be any question of cheating for his team. Ilvermorny can win fairly, on their own strategies, and he’s not going to ask Francesca about it before the Tournament ends.

The day after he walks out with the Tournament Cup, however, is a different story. He’s going to pick her up, kiss her soundly with the Cup in hand, then he’s going to take her back to his hotel room and grill her on whatever John has on his arm right now.

He might have fantasized about that moment more than once in the last week. Winning the Triwizard Tournament, getting her to spill her new technology secret, and then snogging her, a serious and determined effort that will have to tide him over until the summer, which is when he hopes he’ll be able to see her next.

A few months over the Triwizard Tournament isn’t going to be enough with her. He already knows it. He wants more than a few months here, more than maybe even a summer. He needs to tempt her over to England to see him, and he knows exactly how he’s going to do it.

Francesca is a romantic. She loves castles and Aldon will take her to every damn castle in the northwest and Scotland if it’ll convince her over the pond. And if that doesn’t work, there’s Blake & Associates, Mum’s consulting, research and development firm, and he’ll suggest an introduction for her. Whatever her new piece of technology is, it’s brilliant, and it deserves funding. 

AIM plays the next day and Aldon settles in to watch. He wants to see John’s new channelling method for himself, because all he has is a poor description from Sean, Saoirse’s friend. Sean doesn’t have much training in magical theory, however, so his description involved a lot of waved arms and comments about _a very fast nonverbal Fortis shield._ He’s looking forward to making his own impression.

The game opens, and the Patagonia team appears on the top of the City terrain—a bland, six-storey office building in a nondescript town somewhere in the north of England or Scottish lowlands. Aldon is looking forward to playing on the City terrain, if only because it’s the kind of close-quarters combat he’s used to from schoolyard brawling. He examines the rooftop with some interest, because the team on the roof has a minor advantage, but the screen switches to the AIM team in the basement.

They’ve made changes to their team lineup. The girl injured last week is gone, replaced by none other than Keladry Mindelan, at sixteen already the top dueller on the North American circuit. Mindelan is carrying what Aldon recognizes as a _naginata_ , the traditional weapon of Japanese noblewomen. It is notoriously difficult to use, particularly for spellcasting, so Keladry must have been training with it since she was a child. She carries it with confidence.

John is beside her, wary brown eyes scanning their surroundings, and their third player is already gone. Scouting, Aldon presumes—he knows nothing about the third AIM player. They move in silence across the floor, and then the building starts shaking.

Aldon doesn’t worry for the first half-second. Vibration spells are _de rigueur_ in the Triwizard Tournament, cast nearly every other game. But the vibration doesn’t end as it normally does, the structural integrity spells on every terrain don’t catch and Aldon knows it’s _wrong_. There’s something wrong with the spell, or with the terrain, and one of the Patagonian players is screaming, his voice ringing out over the screen—

“The building is going down!” One of the Cascadia players is standing, her dark brown hair flying, expression panicked as she translates the Spanish. “No, no—Juan can’t hold it, he says something has taken hold of the spell and is draining him, he can’t hold it! _The building is going down!”_

The building is already going down before she’s done, and Aldon shoots to his feet.

“Ilvermorny!” he’s yelling, scanning the room for his own team. They have their own Healers, they have their own fighters—AIM needs support, and he can hear someone on the Cascadia team yelling too. He spots Olga first, turns to her. “Where are Sarah, Elliott and Marina?”

Olga shakes her head, rising to her feet. “I don’t know, but I’ll go find them.”

“Good—AIM has the best Healers, but these kinds of injuries—” he cuts himself off, looks back up at the screen, which shows only rubble. Rubble, and he knows the AIM team is under that rubble.

Francesca was comm-linked to John when the building went down. She’s going to be absolutely shattered. He looks around, flagging down Sean, who seems to be looking for his teammates. “Sean—can you ask your team for Healing support? We should be free and available, in case AIM needs us.”

“Sure, Al.” Sean nods, glancing at the screen, and shakes his head. “Fuck, man. Fuck Britain, and what they’re willing to do to keep us down. I’ll get everyone ready.”

“Thanks.” Aldon takes a second to clap him on the shoulder, and he runs for the AIM board room.

He can’t _do_ anything there, of course. The door is barred to him, and all he can do is settle on the faded plush bench across from the boardroom and wait. And wait, and stew, and worry, and wait. He sits, and he waits, and he pictures all the revenge he’s wanted to enact for years on Hogwarts and on Wizarding Britain, in the name of himself, on behalf of his Mum, on behalf of every newblood or halfblood exiled from their homeland, and if John or anyone on the AIM team dies for this, the revenge he’ll enact for them, too. Not that he knows exactly what he, a halfblood nobody, would do just yet.

He’d like to burn their pretty pureblooded state, if he could. A bomb in the lower levels of the Wizengamot, timed to go off when the Lords are in session, that would do very nicely, maybe. It would echo _this_ , and if he staggered the charges well enough, maybe he could bring down the building.

It’s an hour later when Francesca staggers out, looking drained and exhausted, and Aldon catches her as she stumbles.

“They’re all fine,” she murmurs into his ear. “Well, Sidney isn’t fine, his leg is crushed but John and Kel are fine. The ACD worked until Kel could stabilize the building. They asked—asked that I go ask Ilvermorny and Cascadia Healing teams to be on standby.”

She’s yawning, and Aldon looks down at her, worried. He’s worried enough that he leaves off his fantasies of revenge and ignores her mention of the _ACD._ “I’ve already gotten the teams together. Are _you_ all right?”

“Backlash,” she mutters, not that it explains anything, and she burrows her head into his sweatshirt. “Need sleep.”

Aldon hesitates, then sticks a Weightless Charm on her and carries her to his room. He doesn’t have the key to hers, and it seems like easiest thing to do for the moment. He catches Toby on the way, tells him to go tell the Ilvermorny and Cascadia Healing teams to be on standby, and tucks Francesca into his own double bed. She’s out cold, and while he could cuddle up with her, it doesn’t seem like a very good idea. In fact, he is pretty sure it is a very bad idea, so he looks around the room and settles himself onto Toby’s bed, turning on the telly to distract himself.

She’s still out when Toby gets back. Toby takes one look around the room, shakes his head, and sits on the end of his bed.

“Where the hell am I supposed to sleep?” he asks, and Aldon knows from his tone that he’s mostly complaining for the sake of complaining. He isn’t upset.

“In your bed.” He shoots Toby a warning look, tilting his head towards Francesca, who’s still asleep.

“And where are you going to sleep?”

“In your bed.” Aldon sighs, rolls over to look at his friend without craning his neck. “We’ve shared a bed often enough, Toby. We can do it for a night, if she doesn’t wake up. Though, if she doesn’t wake up soon, I think I should call one of the Healers. She’s been out for hours.”

Toby sighs, rolling his eyes. “We last shared a bed when we were _fifteen_ ,” he mutters, but he lets it go, just as Aldon knew he would. “Anyway, I have updates. The strategists and politicos have been meeting all afternoon—AIM is pulling out. It’s too dangerous for them now. Cascadia, the United Academy of the ICW, and the Collège d’Alliance are following suit. Derrick approached us about withdrawing, too—the idea is, if Hogwarts wants to win, we let them win, but we make that win absolutely worthless.”

Aldon sits bolt upright. “We can’t withdraw,” he snaps. “Absolutely not, hell no, we’re not pulling out. If AIM is out, we need to keep fighting. _Someone_ has to keep fighting, and we’re it. We’re strong, we’re dominating our pool, and if AIM is out, _we_ need to kick Hogwarts out in the eliminations. We need to win this, Toby, for everyone. There’s no other option.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Toby shakes his head again, rueful. “So I said that, but Aldon…”

“What? You know it’s true, Toby.”

Toby sighs again. “Just—we should think about this. There’s more than one way to fight, Al, and you have to think strategically.”

“Strategically?” Aldon chokes. “We have to take on Hogwarts! _Someone_ has to take them on, we can’t just—just let them walk into a win, let them use this Tournament to say that they’re better than the rest of us. Which they _will_ , Toby.”

“Think with your head, not with your blinding need for revenge.” Toby smacks him on the shoulder. “Look, Al, I know you better than anyone else, and I _know_ you’re burning for it. But whoever is behind the attacks, they tried to kill the entire AIM team today. Sidney is going to walk with a limp forever, you know? They had to reconstruct his leg, if it wasn’t for the fact that AIM is the best Healing school we’ve got—” Toby cut himself off.

Aldon blows out a breath, falling back onto Toby’s bed. Toby is honest, and it’s not the first time he’s told Aldon to calm down. Aldon is a hothead, and Toby is much less of one. “Fine. Talk at me. I don’t know. I want Hogwarts to pay for this, Toby, I want all of Wizarding Britain to pay.”

“You want them to pay for your whole life, and we don’t even technically know if the Hogwarts team is _involved_.” Even if Toby’s words are harsh, his tone is not. “Hogwarts could be victims as much as the rest of us. But if we withdraw, we along with the other schools, it’s actually a bigger win than just beating them into the dirt would be. It’s a different kind of symbol—an international expression of disapproval, and even if Hogwarts _wins_ , they’ll never really have won. A win is worthless if half the major players walk.”

Aldon glances at him, but his mouth twists. He doesn’t like it, not at all, and every cell in his body is screaming against the idea of a withdrawal. But Toby is smart, and he’s never really led Aldon wrong. “Let me think about it, Toby.”

There’s a rustle from Aldon’s bed, and he glances over. Francesca is waking up, looking very bleary, and Aldon can’t help going over to her. “Hey, Francesca. You all right?”

* * *

AIM withdraws the next day, with a hard statement being read out by Hermione Granger. In some ways, Aldon is surprised that it’s _not_ being read out by Harry Potter, because a statement from a Book of Gold heiress would have the most impact, but it does make sense that it isn’t. Harry Potter is _not_ Harriett Potter, and he’s probably trying to avoid attention.

Aldon doesn’t really care anymore. He’s stewing over it, and over Toby’s words, and there are meetings every day. More schools are withdrawing—the United Academy of the ICW and the Collège d’Alliance on Tuesday, then Cascadia and Escuela Maya on Wednesday morning. Ilvermorny is holding out, Aldon and Saoirse being the primary spokespeople against withdrawing, but Olga is already making clear that she thinks they should be withdrawing, and Chris is wavering. Toby, too, is talking about the advantages of withdrawing on a larger scale—they stand united with the other schools, and it is a bigger political statement than a win on the field.

He’s not wrong. Toby isn’t wrong, but they’re a strong team, and there are a lot of personal reasons in the room to continue. Every student gets one chance at a Triwizard Tournament over seven years of school—only fourth-years and up can try out. Everyone in that room worked hard to get onto the team, and no one wants to leave. Aldon and Saoirse least of all—for Aldon, there’s his personal revenge, being able to appear on a screen in Wizarding Britain showing off everything he’s worked his life to earn as a giant _fuck you_ to the pureblood establishment, and for Saoirse, there is the hope that she brings to the Irish people. They don’t want to pull out, and they’re two-thirds of the players, and that speaks.

By Wednesday afternoon, they’re evenly split—seven votes to remain, seven votes to withdraw. They call a break, and Aldon and Saoirse go to Tesco’s for soda and crisps. Soda and crisps are not exactly guaranteed to smooth things over in the strategy room, but maybe it will keep them all from throttling each other. 

They’re halfway back, when Aldon _just_ sees something out of the corner of his eyes, the strange undulating signal of a Disillusionment Charm, and he shoves Saoirse out of the way. She goes down, the Killing Curse missing them both by inches, and Aldon has a runic _Finite Incantatem_ spell on his fingertips, slamming it onto the ground as broadly as he can.

Two wizards appear, and Aldon’s wand is drawn. The streets are empty, fortunately, which he bets the wizards counted on before they attacked. Aldon hears a whisper of Gaelic from the ground, and a wild wind whips up, slamming into the two mages, tearing at their robes. Aldon’s spellwork is clean, fast, hard—he knows how to duel, and he’s _seventeen years old_ , and that means he doesn’t have the Trace on him anymore. He blasts one into the nearest building, knocking him out the old-fashioned way, then turns his wand on the other.

The other wizard doesn’t expect him to have a wand, or to be willing to use it. That wizard stares at him, wide-eyed for a minute, and turns tail and runs. Aldon hexes him anyway, a Total Body Bind that has him flat on the ground, motionless.

He exchanges a look with Saoirse, whose blue eyes are dark with anger.

“Well,” she says, and Aldon nods in agreement.

They don’t like it. They don’t like it, but Ilvermorny withdraws, and it’s Aldon standing in front of the assembly on the steps of the ICW on Saturday morning. It’s Aldon because Toby and Saoirse back him, and it’s Aldon because he’s their star player, the Captain of the Ilvermorny Duelling Club, and it’s Aldon because Aldon is the halfblood bastard son of the Lord Evan Rosier and he wears his lineage in his dark hair and gold eyes, sharp nose and chin and cheekbones.

He is a younger, somewhat slighter Lord Rosier, and that’s what he knows will be plastered across the screen in Wizarding Britain.

“We, the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Triwizard Team, have regretfully determined that we must withdraw from the Triwizard Tournament, in alliance with our fellow schools across North America, Europe, and Australia,” he reads out from the sheet of paper in his hands, anger burning in his throat, Toby on his left and Saoirse on his right. “This is not a decision that was made lightly; Ilvermorny School has historically had a strong performance in the Triwizard Tournament, and this year is no different.”

He looks up, looks at each of the gathered reporters—more today, he thinks, than ever before. The _Daily Prophet_ is snapping pictures of him, the loud clicking annoying, while the _American Standard_ and _La Presse Magique_ have their recording orbs trained on him. They’ll take captures of him later, better photos off their recording orbs. Aldon ignores them and continues.

“We are deeply concerned about the pattern of attacks against the American Institute of Magic. It seems that the integrity of these games is irreparably tarnished, with unknown parties determined to see that Hogwarts School, a bastion of pureblood supremacy, come to victory by any means possible. But there is no meaning to victory without fairness, and these games are not fair.

“Ilvermorny School further echoes the comments made by Die Schwarzenstein Schule für Hexerei und Zauberei. We, in the strongest of terms, condemn these attacks as a blood-oriented hate crime. We have seen where these attitudes have led, not even a century ago, and we stand with our allies in saying, _never again_. Thank you.”

He steps down from the steps, not looking at any of the reporters and particularly avoiding the _Daily Prophet_. Their bags are already packed, and the plane is waiting to take from directly from London. Francesca is waiting for him there, and it takes Aldon less time than he expects to talk John into switching seats with him for the flight back.

Francesca is glaring at the back of the seat in front of her, her arms crossed over her chest. They’ve had a little over two weeks together—two and a half weeks, if he is precise, but he’s spent more than a few hours with her every day, and he is coming to know her. She’s angry, bitterly so, miserable.

Five hours. He has _five hours_ left with her, right now, and he knows exactly how he wants to spend those five hours.

“Hey,” he says, slipping one arm around her shoulders. “Know what one good thing about there being no Triwizard Tournament is?”

She glances over at him, annoyed but willing to listen. “What?”

He leans closer to whisper into her ear. “You can tell me all about your _ACD_ , and I can tell you all about my Mum’s research and development firm, and my Mastery in Magical Theory.”

The look on her face is priceless.

* * *

One five-hour plane ride is not enough. It’s not enough, and Aldon doesn’t have the materials on hand to create a comm orb with her. Instead, they turn to letters, and Aldon is writing letters three times a week to the American Institute of Magic. Toby and Saoirse are teasing him about it, on and off, but Aldon figures it’s a fair comeback for all the teasing he’s done of them over the years. It’s Aldon’s first serious relationship, and he wants to do it _right_ , and anyway he _wants_ to write to her three times a week. He loves reading what she says, and he loves writing back just as much.

She’s brilliant. She’s utterly brilliant, and even if Aldon doesn’t have the No-Maj science background to keep up with her yet, he’s determined to learn. She’s agreed to come to Britain in the summer, to see him and meet his Mum, and he’s already written Mum about a new potential project. Mum is more interested in Francesca as his girlfriend than she is in Francesca’s project, but Aldon is sure that’ll change as soon as she sees the ACD. The ACD is too explosive, and in one way, AIM’s withdrawal from the Tournament is a good thing for Blake & Associates: had AIM proceeded to the eliminations round with the ACD, Francesca would have had a lineup of partnerships to choose from. But she doesn’t, so there’s only Blake & Associates, and Aldon thinks Mum’s firm is a good one, not least because he will be there.

They manage to meet up once, just once—she has a major dance competition at Cascadia, and even if Aldon has never been interested in magical dance in his entire life, he goes along to see it. Saoirse usually goes on these trips, if only to meet up with Sean and some of her other Irish friends, and Toby comes along just because Aldon is going. Francesca doesn’t win it, though Aldon thinks she _should_ have, but he’s there to wrap his arms around her in mixed congratulations and sympathy when she takes third place.

The competition is just after her birthday, so Aldon is sure to have his present on hand for her—a miniature model of Edinburgh Castle that lights up when she touches it with her magic. She gasps, delighted, and he waves it off as _no big deal_ even though he’s spent more than twenty hours figuring out how to craft it in magic. She looks up at him, seeing through his shrug, and reaches on her tiptoes to kiss him.

He still follows the Tournament, if not very strictly. He’s too angry about it. Hogwarts wins against Beauxbatons, no surprise, and against Durmstrang, and the latter game at least looks tampered. It doesn’t matter, because the powers that be in Wizarding Britain have decided that Hogwarts must win, that Hogwarts is going to win, and Aldon wonders with a twist of his mouth if the Hogwarts players even realize that without the withdrawals, they may not have even advanced. They are good, but AIM was better.

Ilvermorny was better.

For the final, Aldon joins his friends, his fellow teammates, in the Grand Atrium. It’s Hogwarts School against the National Magic School of China, and against the odds, Aldon hopes that the famed Chinese school pounds Hogwarts into the pavement. The National Magic School of China doesn’t discriminate on blood, the whole concept apparently not even noticeable against their usual division of heirloom-casters and paper-casters, but neither do they care about the issue at all. Aldon will take what he can get—another NMSC win is still better than a Hogwarts win, because at least it can’t be used to brag about pureblood superiority.

The final is played on Forest, and the Chinese team appears first. Queenscove’s cousin, Fei Long Lin, snaps open her fan and Aldon hears a few heartfelt sighs around the room. She’s the international star of these games, articles published singing her praises, and even if Aldon thinks it’s a bit ridiculous he’s happy that at least it isn’t the _Hogwarts team_ enjoying the fame. Fuck Hogwarts. Fuck Hogwarts, and their team, and especially fuck _Rigel Black_ who isn’t Rigel Black and is really a halfblood princess named Harriett Potter.

But then the Hogwarts team appears, and Aldon leans forward, because _graveyard is not a terrain_. They aren’t where they’re supposed to be, and when the Killing Curses start flying, Aldon realizes that the Hogwarts team was never a part of the cheating at all. The end goal of pushing them forward wasn’t to win, but was to put them in a position to _capture_ them.

Aldon watches, a grudging almost-respect for Potter appearing as she focuses on getting her teammates out. She saves at least one of their lives, drawing pursuit away and fighting desperately to buy time for her teammates. She’s screaming that they want _her_ , only her, and she gets them out before she’s overwhelmed, dragged to a tombstone and lashed onto it, before they throw a potion into her face and dispel the glamour and all the protective charms that she is wearing.

Ilvermorny doesn’t know who she is, and the Atrium breaks into chatter. But Aldon knows, Aldon and everyone else in Wizarding Britain know exactly who she damn well is, because she wears her heritage on her face, the same as Aldon. Her dark, messy hair could only have come from her father, and her green eyes that are brighter than natural could only have come from her mother. She is Harriett Potter, and there is no point in hiding it, though her strategist blusters and tries.

A wizard is resurrected, but the girl makes it out. She, with her strategist acting as her eyes behind her, picks her moment right and stabs the resurrected wizard in the gut, before turning on the spot and Disapparating.

“Well,” Aldon says, turning to Toby and Saoirse, who are staring at the screen. He doesn’t know yet what will come, but the Dark Society pureblood darling that is _Rigel Black_ has just been publicly unmasked. “This will be interesting.”

* * *

A week later, an article appears on the front page of the _American Standard_. It’s a tell-all interview with Arcturus Rigel Black, better known as Archie Black, who has schooled at AIM the last four years. He wanted to be a Healer, he explains, because his mother died of illness, and his cousin Harry Potter, a potions prodigy, wanted to study Potions under Master Severus Snape. They switched, and they broke the law to do it, because they both had things that they wanted, because they had each other, and because they _could_.

Even hearing more about it, Aldon hates it. He has no reason to think that Archie is lying now, and he even believes Archie when he says that he and his cousin didn’t know what they were walking into. But none of that changes the fact that what they did was a middle finger to every other halfblood and newblood in Wizarding Britain, a sign that they cared for themselves and for no one else as long as they got what they wanted. Halfbloods and newbloods in Wizarding Britain have preciously little—no Hogwarts education, no jobs in government or government-funded enterprises, and that’s just what’s enshrined in law—but they have solidarity in each other and in their shared experience of exile, and Harry Potter and Archie Black either did not think about this or they did not care when they put the ruse in place. And with Harriett Potter being as powerful as she is, Aldon knows how the pureblood establishment will treat this, if she plays her cards right.

Harriett Potter is special. She’s different from all the other halfbloods and newbloods, and while she might have broken the law, she’s proven that she deserved it. No one else needs to try, no change in the law need be made, because Harriett Potter is simply so exceptional that no other halfblood or newblood could have achieved it. The pureblood establishment will give her a slap on the wrist for the ruse, but with her magical power and her connections, she will not truly be punished. Not if she keeps supporting pureblood supremacy the way that she has for the past four years. She will become an exception to the rules, and that will be that. The only thing _unexpected,_ from Aldon’s point of view, is that she’s run.

She’s run, and the real Black is in the news, saying that the ruse was something they entered into when they were eleven, saying that he’ll fight against the laws. And that, _that_ is far more interesting to Aldon than anything else.

The most interesting thing about the blood purity laws is that they are not really about blood purity at all. They are a weapon for control, a method of dividing the masses and turning them on themselves, and blood status often takes a backseat to whether someone agrees or disagrees with the governing establishment. Halfbloods raised in magic who play their cards right may find that they’re legally purebloods, and purebloods who don’t toe the line may have their status stripped, revealed publicly as halfbloods. Consider Saoirse, who is pureblood through six generations and who can trace her wizarding heritage back to Cùchulainn himself: she and her family will never be legal purebloods, not so long as they fight to protect their traditional ways. Aldon doesn’t care what blood someone has—he only cares what they _do_ with it.

Harriett Potter might be a halfblood, but for four years she supported the pureblood edifice. For four years, Arcturus Rigel Black remained silent. And now, even if Harry Potter could have stayed, using all her connections and spinning her own uniqueness to save herself, she has run, and Arcturus Rigel Black is in the news proclaiming he’ll return to Britain to fight against the blood discrimination laws in their entirety.

Aldon can support that. He will never like what they did, and he may never like _them_ , but it’s what they do going forward that’s important.

“He’s going to be arrested,” Aldon hears Toby mutter, reaching over his shoulder to tap Archie’s last line: _We are all mages, and we all have the ability to achieve greatness_. “Something like this? Potter might be gone, but Black’s going to be _arrested_ for this.”

“Then I better be there too,” Aldon mutters back. He looks at his two best friends—they don’t have any secrets between them, within the three of them, and both know exactly why Aldon says so. He is the son of Lord Evan Rosier, and he looks the part. Saoirse nods, a silent agreement, and Toby just looks resigned.

“I need less angry friends,” he complains, but they know he doesn’t really mean it. Toby’s angry too, he’s just better at keeping it under wraps than the two of them. “Fine. To hell we go, and let’s hope we come back.”

When Arcturus Rigel Black is arrested at Terminal M at Heathrow Aeroport in London, it is with Aldon Étienne Blake, Truth-Speaker, the spitting image of a young Lord Evan Rosier, at his side demanding to know the charges.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Elsin for the beta-read! Obviously, most of this was written outside the context of the exchange and a good half of it pre-existed the exchange, and I only had the extraordinary luck to have it sitting around, half-finished in an infant-like state, when I saw merc's request... so I finished it. Sort of. There could be more parts to this later, but I think we're at a good stopping point here. 
> 
> There are so many things I enjoyed writing about this. This Aldon has, on one hand, a close relationship with his parents, considerably more confidence and comfort in his own skin, and he's generally less secretive; on the other, his rage issues twisted into something deeper, long-lasting, rooted in this sense of what he should have had and doesn't. Of course, he doesn't see the other side of himself in rev arc, where he actually did have the wealth and nobility; instead, he imagines the best of it, without considering that he wouldn't have had his mother and his relationship with Lina would be fundamentally altered. This Aldon also has a different skill set, where on one hand he can duel, but on the other he doesn't have the eye to manipulation and political thinking that turn him into a spymaster in rev arc.
> 
> All of this roots into his reaction to Harry's ruse itself. In rev arc, as a halfblood hiding to be at Hogwarts, he admires Harry because she means he's not alone; in this spinoff, he's enraged by it, because Harry is a physical representation of a world where his father loved him and Christie enough to acknowledge them publicly. He's only more enraged because he's been raised very differently - instead of shielding him from many inequalities of the world and raising him largely as a wizarding, noble, and even pureblood child, as the Potters and Blacks do (Archie and Harry are both homeschooled prior to Hogwarts/AIM, they are isolated within a wizarding, if Light, world surrounded by magic, and when the Marriage Law is on the table, Harry is engaged to Archie), Lina and Christie raise Aldon knowing that the world won't be kind to him and teaching him that if he wants anything, he'll need to fight for it (he grows up in a blue-collar townhouse in Manchester, he goes to Muggle primary school because it's cheap daycare for a single mom, he learns through his duelling lessons that he must learn to defend himself because the world is dangerous for people like him). He simply can't imagine a world where Archie and Harry are so sheltered that they don't realize the implications of their actions.
> 
> Finally, an interesting point I always try to put in is how differently "belonging" is defined and treated by both worlds. In Wizarding Britain, belonging is largely defined on blood, so whatever their experiences, Harry and Aldon can never truly be accepted as equals because of their blood-status, but internationally educated halfbloods and Muggleborns define belonging through the experience of their shared oppression, with needing to school abroad being foundational. This Aldon, of course, is fully in the latter camp, so he looks at Harry and sees her as yet another pureblood oppressing him.
> 
> Hoping everyone enjoyed - or, at least, that it made you think.


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